AI-powered virtual assistant may soon smooth your business travel

The startup 30SecondsToFly, based in New York City and Bangkok, is aiming to use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automate and improve the travel processes currently performed by corporate travel agents. "We aim at becoming the scalable travel management company of the future," says Riccardo Vittoria, co-founder of 30SecondsToFly in an interview, saying his is among a handful of the trip tech enterprises that are pioneering a new generation of business travel. Every year companies around the world spend more than $1 trillion US on corporate trips. Even though this market is enormous, it is still dominated by a few giant travel management companies whose business model hasn't changed in more than half a century. Now this market is under attack.