Dispatch 15
Navan co-founder and CTO Ilan Twig shared takeaways on artificial intelligence at a Fortune event this week. Building with AI requires patience and trial and error. Among other challenges, AI models lie. “It’s a huge problem,” he said. “Who would hire an employee that tells you in the interview, ‘Sometimes I lie,’ right?” Watch the video if you’re interested in more along those lines. Here’s a different tidbit: Navan is running an internal network of AI agents.
“I’m using not ChatGPT, per se,” said Twig. “I’m using 200 agents. An agent is ChatGPT with a base prompt that tells it what it is. For example, ‘Act as a travel agent,’ or ‘Act as a supervisor for the travel agent,’ or ‘Act as the manager for the entire call center.’ So now this is an agent, and that’s an agent, and the other one is an agent. We have like 200 agents working collaboratively to achieve a goal — that’s an agentic system, an agentic framework. That’s what the world started talking about earlier this year. … We spent like four months investing and building that thing, and then we went back to build a bot. But this time, the bot was very solid.”
Navan first introduced its client-facing chatbot, Ava, two years ago. Today it manages 7,000 to 8,000 chats daily, according to Twig. “Less than 45 percent of these chats end up with a live agent,” he said. “When we started this journey, we had 400 [human] agents worldwide. Since then, we probably tripled the business in terms of volume and support contacts, but we still have 400 agents.”
Twig was asked what would be left for humans to do. It was reminiscent of a notion in a Navan investor presentation surfaced in 2023 by The Information: “Chatbot replaces agents.” Twig didn’t provide a direct answer in the context of corporate travel processes. He suggested a timeline of “a few” to 10 years, but he was also talking about robots folding laundry.
A Reuters article published Thursday said 10-year-old Navan was lining up its long-awaited IPO for as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Unnamed sources identified a target valuation of $8 billion or more, according to the article. Amex GBT’s market capitalization at the close of trading Thursday was $2.9 billion.
Providers of non-profiled traveler services would like to remind you that they, too, offer at least parts of what Juno and Empath Travel are up to. Reimbi is a solution “for the guest reimbursement half of the equation that has been around since 2017 and has strong traction,” according to the company’s co-founder, David Heller. “That’s been missing in the stories about Juno and Empath and the ‘guest’ problem, as it seems this is being presented as an unfulfilled need in the market, which is not the case.” Egencia senior director of product marketing Natasha Samuel called coverage of the startups — which included news of Steve Singh’s investment in Juno — a “real head-scratcher moment” since “Amex GBT Egencia has supported guest travel bookings for over a decade.” Other TMCs do, as well. Buyers say they see a need for an end-to-end solution, including both reimbursement and travel services.
It may be a dream for some flyers, but Lufthansa’s Allegris business class is causing headaches for buyers. The airline charges seat selection fees that vary, even within the cabin, depending on the type of seat booked. Travel policies often outline whether seat assignment fees are generally reimbursable, but getting into the specific seat types of Allegris could be unwieldy. According to Lufthansa, there are suites in the first row (double on the inside, single by the window), “extra space” seats, window seats with extra privacy, extra-long-bed seats and classic business class seats. One travel manager said a company employee faced the dilemma of heading to the airport without an assigned seat or shelling out $600 more for a “suite” seat — the only one left for pre-assignment on that flight.
Travel management software provider Agency Technology is taking a new approach to quality control, moving to the agent desktop some of the file finishing functions that travel counselors often save for the end of their shifts. At The Travel Team in Buffalo, the AutoPilot solution increased efficiency and flexibility for enhancements. The tool prompts agents for custom info, such as cost centers or billing codes, “ensuring bookings are completed and ready to be ticketed or invoiced with less dependency on mid-office QC checks,” according to Michael Goncalves, director of automation and technology at The Travel Team. Calgary’s Boulevard Travel is also using AutoPilot, which is GDS-agnostic and can be used with other mid-office tools, according to Agency Technology execs. SAP Concur’s Compleat and Cornerstone Information Systems’ iQCX also play in this space.
A pair of relatively new corporate travel players focused on Latin America raised a lot of money, both in Series B rounds. Mexico City-based Mendel in March announced $35 million in new capital and Onfly, with offices in San Francisco and São Paulo, in April said it secured $40 million. Offering payment, expense and travel management, Mendel claims a “dominant market position” in Argentina and Mexico, with clients including Mercado Libre, FEMSA and McDonald’s. On tap this year is expansion to Chile, Colombia and Peru, with Brazil targeted for 2026. Onfly “digitizes and streamlines corporate travel and expense management for more than 2,000 companies, including Vivara, PicPay, Hotmart and Vtex.” It expanded into Mexico last year.
Reaction: Thanks to the following subscribers for submitting comments: David Bishop and Mat Orrego on TMC conflicts of interest; Eric Ediger and Brandon Strauss on Jean Belanger’s ROI column; Rebecca Jeffries on Roamr; Nicole Del Sesto on Concur Travel, the demand outlook and New M.O.; Louise Miller on TMC pricing; Ediger, Caroline Strachan and Kevin Trill on Jeff Klee’s AI column; and Patrick Maas on car rental pricing.
Around The Web• Here are our last couple of Business Travel Executive Town Hall reports, on working with startups and telling stories with data.
• For the first time, White men are now outnumbered on the boards of S&P 500 companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “It’s amazing that the shift in boards is occurring at the same time DEI is being dismantled in lots of organizations,” said David Larcker, a professor who studies corporate governance at Stanford. Not so much in corporate travel. Among a group of 11 major lodging, transportation and distribution companies whose boards are publicly disclosed with photos, The Company Dime found 66 who appeared to be White males and 52 who did not. Related: GBTA coverage in February.
• For those who don’t pay for The Wall Street Journal, here’s a gift link to some unsettling coverage of recent “troubling” air traffic control incidents. There were more issues at EWR on Friday.
• Let’s take a moment to appreciate Mark Pestronk and his Legal Briefs column in Travel Weekly. Some recent highlights: “Getting your share of airline commissions“; “Inside Sabre’s NDC terms and conditions”; “Why the DOJ is wrong on Amex GBT-CWT.”
• Here are Edward Hasbrouck’s details on REAL ID. This one’s new: “FAQ: What can you do if you aren’t allowed to fly without REAL ID?”
Go FiguresThe United States was an “outlier” in terms of first quarter corporate lodging activity, according to a HotelHub report on nearly 2 million bookings.
A “striking decline in U.S. hotel volume amid growing geopolitical uncertainty” amounted to 7.8 percent fewer bookings year over year, while the global aggregate “changed little” versus the first quarter of 2024. “The increased booking volume in other regions may be indicative of businesses upping their in-person meetings as they navigate the implications of inconsistent U.S. policy,” according to HotelHub. “Many countries traditionally allied with the U.S. have seen hotel booking volumes rise in Q1 2025.”
The average daily rate paid by corporate travelers in every U.S. city included in the report dropped versus last year, as did rates in many other major business hubs around the world. The global average, though, was essentially flat.
The United States also stood out in terms of booking lead time. For domestic stays, the length of time between booking and check-in dropped almost 2 percent, the first such decline “since the end of the Covid pandemic, suggesting a surge in last-minute local travel from U.S. businesses,” according to the report. Global average lead times increased around 5.5 percent for both domestic and international bookings.
Pithy Wisdom
“Shadow AI emerged the moment public generative AI tools took off. Our approach starts with clear policies: Employees must not feed confidential or sensitive data into external AI services without approval. We outline acceptable use, potential risks and the process for vetting new tools. On the technical side, we block unapproved AI platforms … to prevent sensitive content from being uploaded. If someone tries using an unauthorized AI site, they get alerted and directed to an approved alternative. We also rely heavily on training. We share real-world cautionary tales — like feeding a proprietary document into a random chatbot. That tends to stick with people. By combining user education, policy clarity and automated checks, we can curb most rogue AI usage while still encouraging legitimate innovation.”
American Express Global Business Travel chief information security officer David Levin, in an April 14 VentureBeat article
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