Corporate Travel Management (CTM) has added proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to Lightning, the company’s online booking tool. This enhancement will power personalized search results for each traveler’s booking. CTM has launched Lightning AI in North America, with other global regions following in the near future.
“Adding artificial intelligence and machine learning into our Lightning OBT experience delivers the results we know travelers want to book, but that also fit company policy,” said Joel Bailey, CTM’s chief travel officer for North America. “CTM has worked behind the scenes to train multiple overlapping algorithms to work with historical booking data, company policies, known preferences, and other variables. In doing so, we can serve up more relevant options to travelers with prediction accuracy continuously increasing as more bookings are made.”
By adding personalized recommendations into search results for multiple travel types, CTM is driving greater speed and simplicity into the online booking experience for Lightning users.
The launch of Lightning’s AI gives CTM the ability to recommend personalized options, even as different content types and options from suppliers exponentially expand the amount of choice travelers see at the point of booking.
“If there are 50 options that fit within a company’s travel policy, that triggers the ‘paradox of choice,’ where too many options make it harder for a traveler to choose and feel confident in their decision quickly. We’re doing the hard work for them, cutting booking times by a minute already,” added Bailey.
New CTM customers can avail of Lightning’s AI capabilities by sharing data booked with their previous travel management company and some initial customer value segmentation by the CTM team based on policy and booking data.
Lehi Mills, CTM’s chief product officer for North America, has led the project and is excited to see it unveiled. “We’ve been quietly building a dedicated team of AI, ML, and Data Science specialists for the last three years,” he said. “This announcement is the first public acknowledgment of that dedicated team and how their work is shaping the future of CTM innovation across multiple products. Lightning’s AI works like your own personal travel consultant who knows what you’ve booked, what you’ll like, and your policy.”
Lightning’s AI has been built using proprietary data models and leverages cloud-based cognitive search capabilities. CTM began indexing booked travel choices in 2019 and uses a variety of AI and machine learning data points to produce company and traveler-specific rankings to surface the ideal options for each traveler and client.
GBTA Convention 2022 attendees can get a sneak peek of Lightning AI at CTM’s booth, #3037, during expo hours each day.
For more details, visit travelctm.com.
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