Beyond the Booth: GBTA 2025 with Conferma’s Stuart Davenport and BCD Travel’s Neil Fyfe

Speaker A: Welcome to Doja Live, the place where top minds in travel and hospitality check in to share insights and breakthroughs shaping the industry. Brought to you by Ankora, your trusted partner for AI, cloud and data driven innovation. Enjoy your stay. Hello, everybody. Dojo Live at GBTA 2025 in Denver, Colorado, here at the Funkorama booth with Stuart Davenport as well as bct, BCD travel guest, uh, Neil White. So thank you guys so much for joining us today on the show. You know, just to kind of wrap up, kick us off. Not wrap us up, we're just getting started. Kick us off, uh, with some of your intros, kind of your own stories in the industry real quick. And of course, what's got you together here at gbt.

Speaker B: Thanks. Um, so, hi, thanks for having me. I'm Stuart Ambort, Chief Product Officer at Confirma. I've actually been with confirma, uh, 18 years. I started as a software developer, uh, and I've had a few different roles, but now I look after software engineering, new product, uh, product management.

Speaker A: I love it. What's your secret? 18 years. Like, what do you drink? Can I have some of that?

Speaker B: Near zero stress. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Speaker C: I'm Neil Fife from bcd, Head of payments at bcd. I've just been with BCD just over a year now. I, uh, previously was working with Stuart at, ah, Confirma. So I've got some, certainly in the fintech and payment space. And before then I was, I would say for a number of years.

Speaker A: All right, I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you guys so much. You know, Stuart, we're going to kick it off with you. Virtual cards are on the rise. Um, curious. I know we got to talk about this in the media day, but what's kind of holding back hotel payments in particular with this from catching up with sort of the rest of travel experience. And let's just highlight the virtual art.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I guess, I guess for us, um, but you know, Confirm has been in the industry about 20 years, just a little bit longer than I've been there. Um, and, um, we've really, you know, distributed, proliferated virtual cards into the industry. Um, so it's not a new thing. Virtual cards work. They're really successful in a myriad of different markets globally. Um, but the way that payments can be processed virtual cards is, um, there's a difference, you know, depending on which hotels you're going to or which front desk agent you actually get at that point in time, every hotel in the world can actually Process a virtual card, it's just a credit card really. We don't print it on plastic. It's a unique card number. It's a temporary credit limit and temporary period of time when it's actually active. But how that card is actually distributed and sent to the hotel to allow them to charge the card, you effectively have to give them authority. Um, so we have to send a message to the hotel. It's, you know, you can generate a card online, it can be sent to the hotels, guaranteed, just like your card in your pocket, you book online, it just works. So the virtual cards, the difference is the hotel needs to have an instruction that gives them authority to actually charge that card. So um, we do that historically back in the day, 100% of the messages to the hotels are in fact um, and it's still an outdated process that still exists. But you know today 4% of our global volume is on fax. But that 4% causes such friction. Uh, and then we've also got email messages that we sent out as well. So actually the process of um, how the hotel takes that data and re keys it into their property management system, that's the kind of the sticking point, the point of breakage. Um, and um, the frequency that that happens, that's where the pain really starts to out by um, the corporations.

Speaker A: All right, well thank you for that very, very thorough and well explained answer. You know we, we touched on um, the fax, the three letter word, the fax. You know how that's being used to um, to send payment details in the complication of that why it's still being used in 2025. What's that knock on effect for the traveler or what are you guys seeing? What's that look like and why should this actually be of interest or you know, not only the travel management side and the travel experience side, but the hotels as well for guest experience.

Speaker C: Uh, from a traveler's perspective, the traveler doesn't actually get, interact with the fact it's really in the hotel communication. Right. So uh, from the hotel communication, if that communication fails then it impacts the traffic. But it's not really. The traveler doesn't really see the facts or the, or the integration method between the, between, between confirma and the hotel. Right?

Speaker B: Yes. You know this is wrong. Well yeah, but is there a high incidence of that? Well I suppose that the point is that this is supposed to be an invisible payment experience I should be able to book as a traveler and who cares about how the payment between my company and the hotel is happening? I Just want to check in and check out. Um, so the traveler is absolutely the one that feels that pain when something does not work. You know they are uh, they're feeling the friction, they're feeling the delay at check checking, quite frankly embarrassment. Um, you know they're not expecting to pay for this thing and something's not working. So the traveler is the one that feels the pain right there and then. But the entire value chain kind of breaks down. Know the travel management company feels the pain because they're going to get uh, you know, an upset customer that's ringing back in the servicing costs that relate to that. Uh, um, the travel manager at the corporation is going to feel that because they, they benefit from the central reconciliation security, um, the fact that they don't have to use expense tools for this type of volume. They're the ones that uh, win. But when it breaks everyone, everyone falls down. So it's really important that we um, move on and go beyond facts. And certainly from a confirmer point of view, um, at ah, gbta we're announcing that we are starting to deprecate on our platform fact support, which again I appreciate is bonkers that we're talking about that in a world where we look around the room and everyone's talking about you know, gen AI, agent kbi, um, and we're talking about turning off fax machines. But you know it's um, it's still a problem that whilst it's a low proportion of global volume, 4% globally, 12% here in the U.S. we need to be able to um, kind of, let's just say goodbye to the facts.

Speaker A: Absolutely. But I think it's part of what we highlight. Even with AI, right, it's still fragmentation that happens all over the place and it's working and it's starting to, to be used but it's still a struggle. And so it's just another one of those things that just has to kind of go to the wayside. Let's talk about you know, the users of this um, killing the facts. Right. At bcd, you know, how are your travelers, your corporate clients responding to the evolution of payment technologies in general like virtual cards? Are there measurable impacts on policy or compliance satisfaction? What are you hearing? Seeing?

Speaker C: Yeah, there's a few things, um, one of the things that obviously we're uh, uh, embracing as well is the virtual card rating that Confirm has come out with. So we can actually articulate uh, to travel uh, managers and travelers just how successful an individual property is at accepting virtual cards. So there will Be a racing within the, within the sales, uh, within the sales screen so you can actually see whether the hotel has a good historical rating of accepting and processing virtual cards in a successful manner. So that's a, that's a very, that will be uh, very, very uh, very helpful to both the travel managers and the traveler so they can select properties and that will help influence where travelers go. Because if you've got a property that uh, you know is not accepting the, the virtual cards and that's the better that they've chosen to use and they potentially choose another property. So that's, that's one of the things

Speaker A: and I suppose that's uh, a final warning to the hotels of kill the facts because you have to.

Speaker B: It isn't. But I think the important thing of you know, we're not just saying to hotels right, well that's it, you know, you're on email. The most important thing that we um, we're doing is we're trying to provide an off ramp for hotels of uh, okay, fax isn't the option. What's the next thing that we should be looking at? So over the past few years we've moved a lot of hotels onto email, secure email. They work with Confirma. We have a product called Confirma Connect. Any booking we see through uh, 200 different points of sale from those 400 travel management companies. If we see a booking for that hotel, the 90,000 hotels that have opted in will divert the message to their preferred location. Um in April we announced a partnership with Hilton where we've directly integrated with their uh, uh crs. So 8,600 hotels from Hilton globally uh, are now having messages updated not by email or fax. You know we go straight into their system to update the booking record. And then at GBTA yesterday we as uh, part of the announcement with regards to deprecating facts, we also announced the extension of that Confirm a Connect Direct um, proposition. So we have got um, uh, Windham Hotels, Omni Hotels, Thon and um, Strawberry Hotels that Hubble um, uh, decided to opt in and have that direct duration and confirm her. So over the coming months we'll start to roll that out uh, um, and directly integrate their property management system. So again optimize payments because it's not about getting people um, on email. We don't want to send credit card details out like that. We want to have it embedded in the process. So when it gets to that uh, the traveler is checking in the front desk agent where there is a high turnover of staff. They know exactly what to do. Because the screen tells them what to do.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. And I think it's the, you know, the, the crawl, walk, run and that you're, you're kind of looking to that. One of the things that I like to think of too is like with technology we still have the people. So it's the, the two big important P's, the people, the partnerships. Um, so that's, that's really, really great. Congratulations there. So this is a question as it goes for the both of you. What do you think is next? What's next in hotel, the hotel payment journey? What needs to happen industry wide to get there? What has got you guys excited? Looking forward to.

Speaker B: I think, you know, the focus certainly from a confirma perspective, um, from virtual cards is yes, driving up acceptance at hotels, uh, optimizing the invoice collection process. So you know, corporates don't have to go chasing hotels for invoices. We bring that back digitally. But then it's also virtual cards are not exclusive to hotels. They can be used in other kind of payment methods. You know, capturing more share of wallet within travel. That's uh, really key to confirm us. So beyond hotels, what are we doing for air? Uh, what are we doing for ground transfer and ultimately incidence?

Speaker C: I think also what Stuart says about the integration with property management systems is absolutely critical to make sure that we have a completely seamless process for hotels. We're also looking to make sure that we've got a digital wallet program as well so that the card can be delivered to the traveler on a digital wallet. So, uh, should things go wrong in any sense, there is also there's always a virtual card on the digital wallet that you can literally tap and pay at checkout. So if they ask you to use your own card, you'll still be using the virtual card, uh, that you've been issued. Um, but it'll just, hopefully just be a seamless process. So you have to overcome some of these challenges we've got in the market today.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, last question, kind of second to last question. A light note here. What do you guys. When you're traveling, window or aisle? And why?

Speaker C: Uh, aisle, so I can get out quickly. Okay. Unless of course, I uh, am lucky enough to be in business and then I'll save the window. But maybe not maybe. Usually I always,

Speaker B: I would agree. I don't want to climb over anyone. Um, I don't want to wake up anyone. So aisle is uh, definitely.

Speaker A: But then you gotta have people climbing over you.

Speaker B: Hey, they can wake me up. That's okay. That's okay.

Speaker A: I love it. You know, for those of you who want to continue the conversation with either BCD or Confirma, you know, what's the best way to get a hold of you all your teams and to, like,

Speaker B: certainly feel free to reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. So, Stuart Davenportconfirma. Um, and again, anyone through the team on Confirm.com.

Speaker C: yeah, the same with me. You can connect to me on LinkedIn. It's Neil5 from BCD Travel.

Speaker A: All right, thank you both. Have a great rest of your DBTX1 to 25. And we'll see you all later as well. Bye for now.

Speaker C: Thank you.