There's no shortage of corporate travel platforms to choose from these days. So why does business travel still feel stuck in the past? We asked Signe Blum, World Travel's Director of Product and Technology, who's been building Spree around an answer the industry keeps missing.
Sig, you've spent your career at some of the biggest names in travel management, but you decided to join World Travel earlier this year to lead strategy for our new platform, Spree. What drew you here?
After years in corporate travel, I knew what buyers were constantly asking for: powerful, modern tech that actually works, backed by real human service when things go sideways. Everyone talks about finding that balance, but very few hit the mark.
I joined World Travel because we’re taking a fundamentally different approach. By anchoring our platform in agentic AI, we give you access to the best tools on the market without locking you in—giving you control, flexibility, and a smoother experience for your travelers.
Building this way isn't the easiest path for a TMC, but it’s the right one for our customers. Plenty of companies claim to put the customer first—World Travel is one of the few actually doing it, and I am excited to be a part of that journey.
So what's one thing that actually makes Spree different for the customer?
No tradeoffs. A lot of travel management companies make you pick: modern technology, or real service — like a team that knows your program and a counselor who steps in when travel is disrupted. That's the false choice Spree is built to end. We don't see technology and service as competing priorities. We've built Spree so they work together.
Spree was built around an ecosystem of partners rather than a single tech stack. Why go that way?
The reality is that no single provider is best at everything. Build a closed platform, and you force customers to take your weakest tool along with your best one. They deserve the leading capability in every area, whether that's booking, expense, AI, reporting, payments, or traveler experience.That's why we've built Spree as an open ecosystem. We partner with industry leaders like Serko, Emburse, and Cerebri AI, while also giving customers the flexibility to integrate their own preferred technologies and existing investments. Customers get the strongest tools in the industry, working together in one place, without being locked into a single vendor or forced to compromise on the solutions that work best for their business.
Everyone’s got an AI story right now. What makes Spree’s different?
The best AI is the AI you never notice…the thing quietly working in the background, surfacing options that actually fit you, flagging a better fare, clearing the busywork and helping travel managers run programs more efficiently. That's the kind of AI we built into Spree from the start, rather than treating it as an add-on.
The point of the story really isn't AI. It's what it does for the person taking the trip and the business they are driving.
Last one — where's managed travel headed over the next few years?
I see three trends shaping the next few years.
First, AI becomes expected rather than a differentiator. Customers will care less about whether it exists and more about whether it actually improves their experience.
Second, travel ecosystems will become more open and connected. Buyers want technologies that work together, not isolated platforms they have to bridge themselves.
Third, human expertise becomes more valuable, not less. As AI handles the routine work, people play an even larger role in strategy, traveler advocacy, and solving the problems that don't have easy answers. The organizations that succeed will be those that bring all three together: intelligent technology, connected ecosystems, and trusted service. That future is exactly what we built Spree to be.