Serko sets out AI advantage and pathway to 2030

Serko has been the engine behind corporate travel for almost twenty years, and at our Investor Day presentation we shared our strategic vision to carry this momentum forward to 2030 and beyond. The full set of presentation material is available on our investor centre.

In 2024, Serko made deliberate investments in AI capability - focusing on building the foundations and teams required, and committing investment to accelerate the platform’s evolution, with AI firmly in focus. Last year, as powerful new agentic protocols came on stream, Serko fast-tracked our plans and moved quickly to proof-of-concept in advance of a 2026 launch of a multi-agent travel management solution.

At our Investor Day, we showcased how we are uniquely positioned to lead the industry at the intersection of AI innovation, global business travel growth, and evolving traveller expectations.

Serko has now entered the next chapter of its mission to move beyond travel booking, and scale its operations to improve margins, facilitate deeper utilisation by travellers, and expand into new commercial models.

‍Focus areas for Serko:

• Introducing Serko.ai, our new multi-agent AI solution, set to redefine the customer experience, that will launch in the US during April in a limited user trial
• Scaling our product and partnership with Booking.com for Business through increased innovation
• Refining our US growth strategy to focus on defined corporate segments, where long-stay travel demand is recurring at scale

Serko’s approach leverages the credibility we have built after almost two decades in the industry, leaning on the US-based GetThere platform, and the proven ability of Booking.com for Business to win in large offshore markets.

Market Context

The future direction of travel

Travelling for work is at a genuine turning point and the sector is on the precipice of a major and long overdue shift.

At our Investor Day, we predicted a profound change in the way that people search and book travel, and how travellers actually behave - increasingly shifting from manually managing bookings themselves to delegating intent to intelligent systems that can act on their behalf. As this transition occurs, solutions that combine proprietary data, deep supplier connectivity and the ability to operate within corporate policy environments are expected to have an advantage.

Serko expects the evolution of AI in business travel to be characterised by:

• Travellers delegating trip planning to agents rather than manually searching and booking
• Policy applied and adapted based on context
• Proactive travel disruption management and automated servicing
• Optimisation for traveller outcomes rather than single criteria, such as lowest fare
• Consolidation of fragmented tools into trusted, end-to-end platforms

These predictions are not speculative future states - there are already early visible signals in customers’ expectations that these changes are imminent. Serko sees these shifts as opportunities, not threats, as they aim to provide world-class products that harness the power of AI and agentic workflows for corporate customers and partners.

Highlights

Introducing Serko.ai

Drawing on Serko’s nearly 20 years of travel expertise, proprietary data and supplier ecosystem, Serko unveiled Serko.ai, its new multi-agent AI solution. The platform is set to redefine the traveller experience and empower the corporate travel manager.

Serko.ai is designed to:‍

• Act on behalf of both travellers and companies, making decisions within individual preferences and corporate policies
• Simplify the end-to-end experience of booking and managing travel for work
• Deepen Serko’s role with travellers through broader adoption of its end to end trip management capabilities

Serko.ai will launch in the US during April in a limited user trial, following successful completion of a proof of concept developed with target customers. It is positioned to become central to Serko’s offering, supporting US growth, and will become available in additional markets over time.

Scaling Booking.com for Business

Building on its strong momentum with Booking.com for Business, Serko has a clear pathway to scale this product and partnership through continued innovation and a focus on strengthening its core experiences, starting with the journeys themselves.
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Booking.com for Business is expected to:

• Continue to be a core growth engine: Supported by partnership strength and ongoing investment
• Create a seamless, unified experience: Between Booking.com for Business and Booking.com  
• Cover full-spectrum travel: Operate as a complete multi-segment travel platform
• Integrate intelligence at every step: Personalised and proactive AI-driven guidance
• Evolve into an SMB travel operating system: Comprehensive tools for managing, controlling and optimising spend

Making Business Travel Personal

The founding promise of Serko has always been personal: Make business travel effortless. Make it less stressful, make it feel like someone is actually looking after you - not just processing your booking. Even better - make it feel like someone is anticipating your thoughts before you’ve had them.

We have seen for some time now that AI would be the technology that allowed Serko to deliver this vision of effortless travel.

We have always had the vision. We have the platform, the data and the relationships. Now we have the technology to deliver the solution we have always dreamed of - with AI the final, transformative piece.

And not all AI is created equal. What separates the winners from the rest will come down to three things: Trust, expertise and data. You cannot build these overnight. The winners in AI will be trusted suppliers with rich proprietary data, layered with domain expertise and customer obsession. AI without these produces average outcomes, and often broken ones.

What makes Serko different is AI that is deeply embedded in proprietary data earned through millions of real booking interactions, built on deep domain expertise in the nuances of corporate travel, and grounded in the trust of the travellers, travel managers and organisations who rely on us to get it right. This is extremely difficult to replicate. With more than twenty years in this space, these competitive and defensible advantages are broad and deep. This is the Serko advantage, which sits across all of our business from Zeno and Get There, to Booking.com for Business, and beyond.