Flight Centre steps up investments in AI-powered chatbot solutions

Flight Centre Travel Group has acquired travel assistance chatbot Sam and increased its investment in 30SecondsToFly, which has an artificial intelligence-powered booking assistant known as Claire.

Flight Centre Travel Group is now the sole owner and licensor of Sam, which is already used by many of the company’s corporate brands including FCM Travel Solutions, Corporate Traveler, Campus Travel and Stage and Screen Travel.

“We’re thrilled to bring the Sam team fully into the Flight Centre family,” says John Morhous, chief experience officer of Flight Centre Travel Group Corporate Brands.

“We’ve worked closely with the team and product for many years now and look forward to continuing to drive mobile innovation through the platform.”

Sam, an iOS and Android app, provides itinerary management, push notifications before and during trips and live chat between consultants and customers.

Flight Centre also has increased its stake in 30SecondsToFly to about 10%, and it will be the exclusive large global travel management company to use Claire for two years.

Claire is an air and hotel booking engine driven by AI-powered chat and trip curation.

The company plans to fully integrate Claire into Sam.

“Having worked with Flight Centre for a few years after their first investment, we know that they are an excellent investor and we’re very pleased that they have led our latest financing round,” says Riccardo Vittoria, CEO of 30SecondsToFly.

“FLT [Flight Centre Travel Group] has given us great help in building technology for TMCs and they fully support our plan to scale into the TMC market and establish Claire as the new standard for TMC call center automation. We are looking forward to implementing our technology for more of their customers.”

Flight Centre Travel Group has more than 30 brands, with company-owned operations in 23 countries and a corporate travel management network spanning more than 90 countries.