this season
BUSINESS TRAVEL
FCM pioneers chatbot technology for business travel
Sam blends artificial intelligence with TMC expertise to deliver relevant information
“2016 was a momentous year for
both the company and our continent team,” commented Amy McPherson, president and managing director, Marriot International, Europe. “We added 40,000 rooms in Europe with the Starwood acquisition alone, and achieved our long-term goal to triple in size, from 40,000 open rooms in 2010 to 134,000 open or signed rooms at the end of 2016. Now, as we look to the future, we have set ambitious goals for 2020. We plan to expand our lead in the luxury and full-service segments, to have the largest portfolio in the upscale tier and to win with millennials in the aff ordable lifestyle category.” marriot
.co.uk
FCM Travel Solutions brought its next-generation chatbot, Sam, to the Business Travel Show for its UK launch. Sam is a highly interactive, ‘smart assistant for mobile’ that supports users via a conversational interface to answer questions, make recommendations and perform actions. Sam assists business travellers with everything from itinerary management, air and hotel bookings, fl ight updates, local city and country information, restaurant suggestions, ground transportation and immigration advice. The virtual assistant picks up on cues, such as travel pat erns and preferences, and the more a traveller uses it, the more intelligent it becomes, with information becoming more personalised. “The pace of evolution in mobile and smartphone technology is relentless
and tech-savvy business travellers are already feeling the urge to use other consumer apps for booking fl ights and hotels, instead of their TMC,” said Kevin Kroll, CIO Europe & Africa of FCM’s parent company, Flight Centre Travel Group. “At the same time, the smartphone era is transitioning towards the conversation era, meaning the way consumers communicate with apps is moving to a message-based approach. In fact, by 2020 we predict consumers will start feeling app fatigue, and text or voice-based interfaces will be the new norm for communicating.” Steve Norris, corporate managing director at Flight Centre, added, “We believe FCM is the fi rst travel management company to introduce chatbot technology to the UK business travel sector.”
fcmtravel.co.uk
BUSINESS IN BRIEF
YOOMA IN PARIS New hotel brand Yooma has opened in Paris this month. The 106-room Yooma Urban Lodge is intended to meet the needs of small groups, which, president of parent company Euragone, Pierre Beckerich, says are “driving the success of Airbnb today”. Around 80% of rooms cater to groups of four to six people.
yooma-hotel.com
DIFFERENT BUSINESS Best Western has released its Business Diff erent survey, based on interviews with 1,000 business travellers. It found over half of business travellers tend to use the same hotel brand and only 28% of respondents had signed up to a hotel loyalty scheme.
bestwestern.co.uk
Q SUITE Qatar Airways has launched its new business class product at ITB in Berlin. The Q Suite is designed to work as individual suites, but with in-built flexibility that allows it to also work in a group setting. Adjustable partitions retract to create a communal space which means passengers can conduct business in privacy.
qatarairways.com
countrybycountry.com | ABTA Magazine
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