Amadeus: Trust and Security May Determine the Role of AI in Business Travel

According to a new report published by Amadeus on June 24, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant promise in corporate travel: booking, travel policy, expense reporting, disruption management, and traveler security are increasingly being linked to AI-based systems. However, the real breakthrough of the technology will not be decided simply by what an algorithm is capable of, but by how companies can build reliable, secure, and well-managed frameworks around it.

The recent Amadeus communication is based on the report titled "Orchestrating Success," which examines the next phase of corporate travel management. The main message is sober and therefore particularly important: AI does not simply mean a faster search engine or a more convenient chatbot. In corporate travel, it can bring value when it is able to jointly manage the travel purpose, budget, internal policy, approval, accounting, sustainability aspects, and the requirements of duty of care, or employer care.

This is a current issue for Hungarian companies as well. Many companies in 2026 are no longer asking whether business trips have returned, but how they can be managed in a more controlled, transparent, and less administrative way. For negotiations heading towards Budapest, Vienna, Frankfurt, London, Paris, or Istanbul, the price of the plane ticket is only one variable. Equally important are the flexibility of modification, the quality of accommodation, the transfer after an evening arrival, the security situation, the employee's workload, and who can oversee the entire trip in real-time in the event of a disruption.

What does the new Amadeus report say?

According to Amadeus, governance, security, and trust become key issues for corporate travel managers. The report states that AI tools are already suitable for automating repetitive tasks: for example, answering policy questions, supporting approval processes, managing travel disruptions, or linking expense processes. With this, the role of the travel manager can shift from administration to strategic management.

This does not mean that human decision-making disappears. On the contrary: a reliable AI system is valuable when it takes routine tasks off the shoulders of professionals, while human control remains for risky, exceptional, or cost-sensitive decisions. A corporate travel policy does not just consist of price lists. It may contain department-level permissions, sustainability goals, security bans, prior approval, minimum hotel quality, and exceptions where the system should not decide automatically.

The report specifically highlights that an AI-based travel experience can link several elements: booking, policy, expense reporting, disruption management, and employer care. In practice, this could mean that a business trip is not a pile of separate emails, PDFs, invoices, and calendar entries, but a unified, continuously updated travel process.

Why is this interesting for Hungarian companies?

A significant portion of Hungarian companies treat Vienna as a natural starting point alongside Budapest, especially for long-distance or rarer business destinations. Therefore, an AI-based corporate travel system must not only recognize which flight is cheaper, but also whether the Budapest airport or the Vienna airport provides better overall travel value. This includes ground access, departure time, connection risk, the need for accommodation, and when the employee arrives in a state ready for negotiations in the destination city.

In corporate travel, the cheapest option is often only the cheapest on paper. An airport hotel the night before a dawn departure, a taxi after a late evening arrival, a lost workday or a missed flight due to a too short connection can quickly rewrite the picture. A well-built AI tool can help precisely with these hidden costs if it has access to the appropriate data and if the company clearly defines what compromises it allows.

From the perspective of the article, the keyword is not magic, but management. For Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises, it may become increasingly important who can set travel rules, who can approve exceptions, what data the system handles, and how it can be documented based on what an AI suggestion was presented to the employee or the travel manager.

Trip intent detection and zero-touch trips: what does this mean in plain language?

Amadeus lists several future use cases. One is trip intent detection, or recognizing that a trip is forming in emails, calendars, or corporate communication. If, for example, a sales team coordinates a client meeting in Munich or London in several messages, AI could in the future suggest the appropriate flights, accommodation, and ground transportation before anyone starts searching separately.

The zero-touch trip goes even further: booking, payment, receipts, accounting, and travel data move between systems, and the traveler performs fewer administrative steps. This sounds attractive, but it can only work well if the system knows which cost center to book to, what hotel limit is valid, which airline or per diem matches the corporate policy, and in what situation human approval must be requested.

The third important direction is voice and text-based booking. In the future, the business traveler can request trip modifications on mobile, desktop, or collaboration tools. This can be convenient during a late flight cancellation or when a negotiation drags on, but in a sensitive corporate environment, it is not enough for the system to be fast. It must also be provable, loggable, and policy-compliant.

Security is not just an IT issue

When Amadeus speaks of security and governance, it is not exclusively a cybersecurity issue. Of course, data protection is a basic requirement: a corporate travel system may handle sensitive information about executives, client meetings, routes, costs, and personal data. But in travel management, security is broader: it is necessary to know where the traveler is, what disruption affects them, whether a rebooking is necessary, and what alternative matches the company's duty of care obligation.

An AI tool, for example, can recognize if a strike, weather risk, or border traffic congestion is expected in a city and can suggest a temporary policy modification. Amadeus describes this as a dynamic policy: the system does not treat the travel policy as a static document, but is able to give recommendations based on events, demand, prices, and risks. Here it is particularly important that the decision is not opaque. The travel manager must understand why the AI suggests a more expensive, earlier, or more flexible ticket.

Sustainability can also be included in the decision-making process. If a company commits to carbon goals, the system must indicate not only the price of the plane ticket, but the entire environmental impact of the trip. This does not necessarily mean that every more expensive or slower solution must be chosen, but the decision can become more conscious.

AI agents put new pressure on the travel market

A recent analysis by Skift highlights the same process from another angle: AI agents do not search like humans. A human sets a few filters, looks at a few results, and then decides. A machine agent, however, can request far more combinations, and thereby place a huge load on airline and travel systems. According to the Skift article, Amadeus executives therefore see a solution to the so-called infinite search problem in pre-calculated answers that are also usable for machines.

This background may seem distant to the Hungarian traveler, but the consequence is very tangible. If in the future a corporate assistant or AI agent searches for the best business route between Budapest, Vienna, or a more distant hub, then the one whose offer appears reliably, regularly, and in a machine-interpretable way will win. The competition between airlines, online travel agencies, and corporate booking systems will partly be about who can remain visible to AI intermediaries.

What should a Hungarian travel manager pay attention to now?

Based on the Amadeus report, companies should not start by immediately automating every travel process. It is much more useful to first get the basics right: is the travel policy up to date, are the approval authorities clear, are exceptions manageable, is reliable data available on spending, and is there a documented process for disruptions.

Planning airport and ground services is also part of the total cost. For departures from Budapest, the BUD online flight information, and for departures from Vienna, the VIE live flight information can help in operational decisions. For late arrivals or early morning departures, Vienna airport hotels or hotels near Budapest airport can be considered not as a luxury of convenience, but as a risk-reducing element. The same applies to Budapest airport transfers and Vienna airport taxis or transfers, if the cost of delay is higher than the pre-organized ground route.

Conclusion

AI in corporate travel does not simply promise faster booking. Its real value can be in a company finally seeing the travel intent, policy, cost, risk, sustainability, and traveler well-being in a single integrated system. However, for this, a flashy interface or a clever chatbot is not enough. Reliable data, strong permissions management, audit-able decisions, and clear human responsibility are needed.

The most important lesson for Hungarian companies is that the foundations of travel management must be strengthened before introducing AI. Those who get the policy, data, and decision-making processes in order now will truly benefit from automation later. Those who let AI handle disorganized processes, will at most get the same mistakes faster, which previously had to be corrected by hand.