Direct Travel Aims to Lead TMC 'Evolution, Revolution'

Direct Travel's Bemont discusses:

The TMC's "wide and comprehensive" content journeyWhat Center's acquisition means for Direct Travel's tech offeringEnabling travel managers to be strategic with AI

Direct Travel CEO Christal Bemont is nearing her first anniversary at the helm of Direct Travel, having taken the leadership position when a group of investors led by corporate travel entrepreneur Steve Singh acquired the travel management company. Bemont, a longtime colleague of Singh's at Concur, now is in charge of the servicing side of creating Singh's long-running vision of "the perfect trip" for business travelers, built off the technology of his other investments, Spotnana, Troop and Center, the latter of which is undergoing an acquisition by American Express. She spoke recently to BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker about her work building a new team at Direct Travel, how the needs of travel buyers are evolving and whether Center's acquisition would alter the TMC's strategy. An edited transcript follows.

BTN: What would you list as key accomplishments in your first year with Direct Travel?

Christal Bemont: We have an incredible team starting out at Direct Travel, and we've brought additional people on board. We've added people to data and AI, we've added people to production. We've really rounded out this team in such a way that puts all of the focal points we have in clear sight. The team is a really big accomplishment, and we did that very quickly. 

We've been spending a ton of time with customers, bringing Spotnana over to start to kick off the Avenir [combined offering of Spotnana, Center and Troop] experience. We've been focusing on the critical points for not only our travelers and traveler managers but also our supplier partners, in how the world is evolving.

BTN: We hear a lot about the evolving role of the TMC. What are you hearing from clients as far as what they need from their TMC?

Bemont: If a TMC isn't thinking about evolution and maybe revolution, then they're probably not focused on the right thing. What we hear from our customers, and in particular travel managers, is there is a deep need for meeting the travelers where they are at. That's not just technology. It's content, it's experiences, it's personalizing and making sure that the travelers' needs from a duty-of-care perspective are met. 

What should be available to people has really broadened and widened, and that's a great opportunity. Changes abound, and they're really looking to embrace that and figure out which technology partners and service partners are ready for that. What does that mean for the travel managers themselves? With opportunity comes responsibility. How do we partner with them to make sure that we help them as they evolve through these changes and evolve to make those things available? [It's] taking care of their travel programs and making sure all the things you expect would be in place continue to be in place, but that it broadens to serve what the future can hold.

BTN: What opportunities do you see from New Distribution Capability?

Bemont: Content is king, and we're on this very wide and comprehensive content journey, and that's very much with Spotnana, obviously. From a servicing perspective, what are the things that have never been available to travelers that can now be available in unique, personalized ways? We're not talking about different types of pricing and packaging but things that don't exist today in front of travelers that can really change their experience. As we look at this and look at the content, we don't just take it as, do we enable content or not. We take it in a way that says, how do we bring this to life to travelers in a very thoughtful, prescriptive and anticipatory way? Data and how we understand the customer is really important to how we're evolving as a TMC. The content itself with NDC is great, because it's more options, but where it gets supercharged is where you take that and carefully curate it for the individual who's traveling to create an amazing, perfect trip.

BTN: Is that largely from automation of changes in times of disruption?

Bemont: There are so many examples of what not only could be possible but should be possible, thinking about these use cases, not just in times of disruption. I think a lot about why business travel is so hard. Outside of flight disruption and those kinds of things, who you are as a person, whether you are traveling for personal or for business, it doesn't change. You just want people to know what you like, what you want and what you need, and whether that is something the corporate travel program will support. You should still have options of being able to augment or supplement that in ways you choose personally to enhance your travel. 

I certainly think there's opportunities with NDC with disruption, in anticipating and predicting all of the things that will be needed as a cascading effect. But I also think about all the times when things go right, and you also can continue to enhance that experience and that travel. I think the opportunities are boundless at this point.

BTN: Is having Spotnana as a core technology enabling those opportunities?

Bemont: There are so many people that are interested in Spotnana. When I first came on board, I asked myself, what are they running to or what are they running from? I think it's both. What's been in the industry is so stagnant, so yesterday and so restrictive in terms of how to serve a customer and create that experiential type of perfect trip. It's the first time you've seen someone come on to the market that thinks about it in the way that [founder] Sarosh [Waghmar] and that team has at Spotnana, and it's an incredible thing to enable that as the nucleus of what you provide, when you combine that with incredible service. 

You have three versions of what's going on right now. You have the people that are stuck with the antiquated technology, that are diluted in service. You have the technology-only solution, that is a no service option, or light service. I intentionally separate for us from either one of those groups, and that's one of our unique value propositions. I think it's an "and" strategy, not an either/or. When you think about fear people have for data, AI and machine learning, and will you replace the people, that's the thing that is different about Direct Tarvel. We still believe the people are very important. We just want to enable the people to be servicing our customers.

BTN: Will anything change with Avenir with American Express' recently announced plans to acquire Center?

Bemont: Nothing has changed. Avenir is a product of three different technologies, a combined technology stack, Spotnana being the one we've really been focusing on to get enabled as our first leg. Center is an incredible partner. We couldn't be more excited for them, and this just strengthens our partnership. That's an incredible group of people, with [CEO and co-founder] Naveen [Singh], and I'm so happy for them, and to be partnered with American Express card, that's going to supersize them, and that just strengthens our partnership and what we can bring to market. Troop is moving along as well, and they have great things happening on the product front. I just see strength in our tech stack continuing every single day.

BTN: Will Otto eventually be a part of this technology stack as well?

Bemont: From a first principles perspective, everything [founder and CEO] Michael Gulman is doing over at Otto fits in exactly with what we're thinking about: How do we personalize offerings? How do we understand the traveler in ways that is anticipatory? Content that comes through NDC is part of it. But one of the reasons I believe so much about service being important to this, it is about the technology enabling this, but where you really understand behavioral data, intent data, different types of information about what people want is when you're really talking to them and servicing them. This is something that is core to Otto, but it really fits in exactly to how we think about the experience for our travelers.

BTN: What areas of corporate travel management do you think will have the biggest impact from AI?

Bemont: It would be easier to talk about the areas I don't think it will have an impact. It'd be a shorter list and a quicker conversation, but let me hit the [ones] we think about the most. 

There are productivity things we can do inside this company that is very agentic. How do I take work that can be put into something that's agentic so the people we have can be servicing our customers in meaningful ways, and very personalized and prescriptive ways? They're not doing the heavy lifting; they're doing the caring for. Everywhere that we can find an opportunity to get answers to our customers faster, to enable our agents or anyone within our team who focuses on customers, we're going to do that to enhance that experience. 

BTN: Direct Travel's name has come up a lot in the ongoing investigations into the American Express Global Business Travel/CWT merger as an emerging competitor for large travel programs. How do you see the competitive landscape with the potential merger happening?

Bemont: Competition is very healthy. If you're not challenging yourself to say what is the unique value that you're bringing, and how do we continue to evolve and maybe disrupt, that's always a measuring stick with competition. This industry is bred of merging and acquisitions and consolidations, but it's a very healthy thing for us to look at the competitive landscape and figure out where we are focused.

BTN: Where are you targeting client growth right now?

Bemont: The number of people that are knocking on the door and asking us about our chosen technology stack of Spotnana varies at this point. There isn't any one industry or segment it's isolated to. It's very much all sizes and types of customers that are looking at, "What are the options in front of us, and how do we enable that?" We've structured our sales team around that. Our go-to-market team is very focused with a lens that's very segmented. It's being very prescriptive with the size and type of customer, so we can go fast when we need to or they need to, and take a little bit more time when there are large customers that are more enterprise-focused.

BTN: Any plans to expand your sales team?

Bemont: We're in a really good spot with Todd Pelletier as our chief sales officer. We have some incredible sales enablement that we've brought on. We've got an incredible program in place and a very solid team. We'll continue to scale and grow our team as needed, so it's evolving, but I think we're in a very, very solid place at this point.