On July 21-23, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) hosted its 2025 Convention in Denver, Colorado, where thousands of travel professionals came together to explore the current trends, challenges and innovations in business travel. This annual conference is one of the industry’s largest and most influential events of the year, attracting buyers, suppliers and key stakeholders in travel – and as always, Atlas Travel proudly showed up in force.
Representing the team were CEO Elaine Osgood, VP Dan McAuliffe, CIO Andy Piggott, Executive Business Development VP Paul Swartz, Senior Program Manager Dawn Udy and Business Development Directors JoAnn Zebniak, Carla Cabrera and Kevin Czepiel.
Takeaways from GBTA Convention 2025
For the Atlas Travel team, time at GBTA 2025 was both energizing and inspiring. The conference created space to reconnect with colleagues, strengthen partnerships and discover emerging vendors who could shape future collaborations. It was also a chance to explore upcoming innovations and engage in meaningful conversations about where the industry is headed.
Amid these conversations, one theme was clear: artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an emerging trend — it is becoming an integral part of managing business travel. Yet, even with these advancements, the irreplaceable human expertise remains at the heart of a successful traveler experience.
As JoAnn Zebniak, Business Development Director at Atlas Travel, noted:
"It was exciting to explore the latest innovations in our industry, especially the growing focus on AI and its impact on both travelers and travel managers. While AI won’t replace the human touch of a travel agent, it’s clear that it will continue to enhance the traveler-agent experience in powerful ways."
The Debut of Roam
With conversations buzzing around innovation and AI at GBTA 2025, it was the perfect backdrop for Atlas Travel to debut its newest product. On the first evening of the conference, the team hosted a special customer and prospect event at Denver's STK Steakhouse, bringing together both new and familiar faces to connect, relax and introduce Roam — a new AI travel booking and payment platform.
Roam was born from listening to the needs of the industry, the market and our clients and prospects, all looking for an intuitive tool that can both simplify and personalize travel management. By combining advanced agentic AI for bookings, dynamic payment solutions and the human expertise and service Atlas Travel is known for, Roam aims to redefine what’s possible in business travel.
As Dan McAuliffe, VP of Atlas Travel & Technology Group, shared:
"We’re technologists as much as we are travel experts. Roam was built by people who understand both the operational challenges of managing travel and the day-to-day realities of being on the road."
Bringing Roam to Life
To give attendees a slice of Roam’s capabilities during the customer and prospect event, the Atlas Travel team offered select clients, partners and colleagues a personalized, boxed experience, which included a complimentary payment card powered by the Roam platform. From morning coffee or rideshares to the airport, recipients could use the card for just about anything during the conference.
By hand-delivering these cards to people during GBTA, it gave them a tangible glimpse at Roam’s potential and the strength of its virtual payment features. It also served as a fun, practical demonstration of how Roam unites payment and travel technologies conveniently. With both virtual and physical cards, Roam allows companies the ability to set spending limits, define eligible merchants or restrict spend by category, date or time.
The Atlas Travel team was excited to debut Roam at GBTA, an endeavour that will surely represent a major step forward, not only for the industry but also for the Atlas Travel brand. The team was even more thrilled with the strong interest from attendees at the event, with many noting how eager they were to learn more and experience the platform firsthand. In fact, many client and prospect buyers registered for the Roam waitlist that very night.
This is just the beginning — we can’t wait to bring more parts of Roam to life in fun, creative ways that give people new opportunities to experience its power.
Want to be part of what’s next? Join the Roam waitlist to stay up-to-date on future announcements and be among the first to explore its full capabilities when it launches: https://getroam.ai
