SAP Concur is launching a new Booking Agent solution next month which matches each traveller’s preferences while also adhering to their organisation’s travel policies.
It provides conversational booking guidance, enabling travellers to use natural language to ask for help booking a trip. For example, travellers can ask “book me a flight to Paris on Tuesday morning” and the Booking Agent will generate suggested, policy-compliant itineraries instantly.
It also provides integrated expense context, surfacing real-time pricing breakdowns, travel class justifications and spend estimates to prevent surprises when travellers submit their expenses.
The launch comes after SAP Concur’s research found 88% of global business travellers say they’d be comfortable using AI-powered automation for some elements of business travel, such as booking, re-booking, or completing expense reports.
Its latest SAP Concur Business Travel Survey found the most popular uses were to support re-booking or making changes before the trip (44%) and curating travel options during the initial booking (39%).
Customers participating in the SAP Early Adopter programme will be able to book flights via Booking Agent from August with general availability planned for the fourth quarter of this year.
SAP Concur is also rolling out Concur Request enhancements to help with trip planning.
A new feature will make it possible to ask for budget that may apply to one or more participants during a defined period of time.
Instead of creating separate requests for each trip, the employee can now submit a single request that covers the budget for all trips over a select period.
The capability can apply to one person with multiple trips, or teams and departments traveling together.
For instance, a manager can request a total budget for a team attending a conference. The approved amount would then be assigned to multiple employees.
Until now, users could only submit requests on their own behalf in Concur Request.
In a partnership with Riskline, Concur Travel also has a new Risk Alerts feature providing important information about potential disruptions, such as airport strikes, natural disasters or visa requirements.
