Flight Centre snaps up AI-based travel platform

Human and a Robot Shaking Hands
By Alexandra Coulton


Flight Centre has acquired a San Francisco-based business travel platform that specialises in personalisation through artificial intelligence (AI).

The platform, WhereTo, pulls in content from dozens of sources and uses AI-based algorithms to show users the best trip options within their company’s policy, factoring in criteria like traffic conditions, travel deals, and personal preferences.

Its the latest in a string of acquisitions and investments Flight Centre has made over the past two years, including its acquisition of Silicon Valley-based Casto Travel.

The travel giant plans to integrate the WhereTo offering into products and services offered across both its Corporate Traveler and FCM Travel Solutions brands.

“Flight Centre’s acquisition of WhereTo will serve multiple purposes within our businesses, in addition to fortifying the continued growth of the already successful WhereTo portfolio with our global resources and footprint,” said John Morhous, chief experience officer at Flight Centre Travel Group.

“Our continued investments in booking technology, content aggregation, AI, and mobile services provide our corporate customers with best-in-class technology tools to help them stay ahead of the rapidly evolving corporate travel landscape.

“We are delighted to come together with WhereTo during this unprecedented time to make a significant advancement in our technology capability, which will allow us to emerge from the crisis in an incredibly powerful way.”

Morhous said an integrative approach using both digital platforms and the human touch is more important than ever during the global pandemic.

“We look forward to leveraging the WhereTo technology within our existing products to help expose the complex duty of care requirements we’ll be facing as global travel restrictions are lifted, in line with the ‘design and control’ of user experiences which underpin the strategies of our two largest brands.”

According to Flight Centre, the partnership with WhereTo is a critical step in building a customer experience from the ground up that can handle an increasingly complex distribution environment.

WhereTo will continue business as usual with its current client base and fulfilment partners.

Featured image source: iStock/AAUB

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