On October 17th, key leaders from the global mobility and business travel landscape gathered at the heart of NYC for AltoVita’s first-ever US Smart, Safe & Sustainable Summit. Following five successful years in London, Singapore and India, the event brough together industry innovators to explore the future of corporate accommodation. Discussions ranged from the evolving balance between AI and human interaction to strategies for employee wellbeing, risk management, and innovation through collaboration, all centred on building smarter, safer, and more sustainable accommodation programmes.
Watch all the recorded sessions on demand here or scroll down to read some of the key takeaways.
Key Takeaways from Our Panel on Supporting Niche Requirements
Key Takeaways from Our Panel on Politics & Passports
Key Takeaways from Our Panel on Accommodation Vetting & Duty of Care
How do we strike the right balance between AI-driven efficiency and the irreplaceable human touch? That is the question.
The summit kicked off with an energetic “un-panel” session, where our host, Senior Director of Client Partnerships Jess Dunderdale, joined Karen Fitzgerald, VP of Global Mobility at NBCUniversal and John Morhous, Chief Experience Officer at Flight Centre Travel Group, to explore the blurred lines between AI and the human touch in corporate accommodation management.
“In a global mobility space I believe that the human touch is essential - and again I go on about culture - but I do believe that the employee experience is absolutely paramount and so, we do speak to anybody who's moving countries to really find out who they are, what they need and really kind of work with them, and I don't think that that initial conversation could ever be replaced by AI.” - Karen FitzGerald from the audience, VP - Head of Global Mobility at NBC Universal.
Standard corporate travel programmes are not always designed to meet the unique demands of specialised industries. AltoVita's SVP of Client Partnerships for the Americas, Alex de Vaux, was joined by Samantha Van Leeuwen, Head of Travel & Meetings at PwC, Harmony Ward, Travel Services Manager at Geostabilization International and Eric Kline, Global Travel Manager at J.R. Simplot.
“It’s about bringing all the technology together to make it easier for anyone entering the ecosystem — to book, track where they’re staying, and manage how they get there. So it's how we bring all that together, and then that brings insight into the business of where they're spending, because, let's face it, cost sits with all of us. It could also improve things like approvals. So if they know what the average cost of a 30-day stay in Manhattan is, then they're actually able to approve that upfront rather than deal with a clunky process.” - Samantha Van Leeuwen, Head of Travel & Meetings at PwC
“The name of the game when it comes to travel for me and I think where the industry is moving is full stack solutions wherever wherever we can. It needs to be a one-stop shop app. It needs to be a mobile first app. That works for both generations. Absolutely. My generation is fully interested in not having to jump between, a manual process or a different app or a different screen or different branding. But even with my older colleagues...trying to explain that you use this service for this type of stay and maybe it varies by country and so on, it doesn't work. Wherever possible, the tools need to work together very effectively. ” - Eric Kline, Global Travel Manager at J.R. Simplot
Geopolitical uncertainty is no longer a background risk. It’s a defining factor shaping the movement of people and businesses worldwide. Alex de Vaux, our SVP of Client Partnerships for the Americas, led an insightful and timely discussion with William Taylor, SVP of Partnerships at Relocity, and Claudia Delgado, Head of Global Mobility at Visa.
“It's about having a plan. It's about having a single source of truth platform that allows you to understand where your employees are, what types of risk they are subject to, how we communicate with them all at once, how we leverage AI to understand and make predictions about what might be coming. I think the real promise is in agentic AI and what the agents can do when we're all asleep. Where we would typically apply the human logic, those agents can now flag situations because they're they're working in real time and they understand what's happening and they can make recommendations to the humans to take actions.” - William Taylor, SVP of Partnerships at Relocity
“I think as a mobility professional our jobs have changed and have evolved. AI is here to stay and we're just going to need to adjust to it. How do we make it work for us with all of these different crisises happening around the world? We have to be pretty nimble with our thinking and our approach. It's not like 'the policy says this'. You're dealing with a human being - maybe they're coming from a location where they need extra support, maybe they're a single parent... The policy is not going to do it - we are going to make it happen.” - Claudia Delgado, Head of Global Mobility at Visa
In today’s interconnected world, risk management in corporate accommodation isn’t just a compliance checkbox. It’s about building trust, ensuring safety, and taking responsibility for the people we move across borders. Hosted by Kerri Amman, our Client Development Manager, this session brought together three seasoned leaders: Jose Lucena, Global Mobility & Relocation Manager at Halliburton, Vladimir Dziak, Head of Global Workforce Deployment & Mobility at Liberty Mutual, and Morgan Crosby, Chief Strategy Officer at AIRINC.
“When we talk about the housing market, right now you can find a lot of platforms where you can get bookings pretty quickly on the internet. There's a lot of AI platforms. There's a lot of places like Airbnb. But when you think of duty of care, those places are not really protecting your employees. They are not really vetting what they are doing. They are not really looking for safe locations for your employees. That's why in the temporary housing market, you need to work with vetted suppliers - with people that actually have a high level of duty of care and are able to mitigate the risk for your employees and the company. You need to think about the well-being of the employee and part of the well-being of the employee is to house them in a place that doesn't have any red flags.” - Jose Lucena, Global Mobility & Relocation Manager at Halliburton
“Historically, we have been running international operations as opposed to our US operations and now we truly strive for one global operating model, but it's almost a push-and-pull approach including local and global. When we came into local operations and said 'we know what those properties should be because we have a great RMC and we have great housing providers', we experienced a lot of resistance, let's say from our Madrid office, where they may say 'we have our set of properties for our business travel population and you guys in Boston don't know exactly what our travellers in Madrid need'. So that was a very hard discussion, but we went into collaboration because we don't want to diminish the relationship with local vetting inspectors. For me, it was almost a mindset shift.” - Vladimir Dziak, Head of Global Workforce Deployment & Mobility at Liberty Mutual
“You need to have a good budget because if you're spending too little, you can have risk. If you're spending too much, that's also risky. So, when we're looking to establish those budgets, we want to make sure that the budgets are based on really good, sound data. So, location, location, location. In real estate, it has to be a location that's safe, secure, commutable. And there are many countries where there are only certain buildings or there's only certain gating requirements. You have to make sure that all of that's taken into consideration. Proximity to other expatriates or other international individuals is also really critical because you don't want the person to feel isolated or alone or like they don't have a community. Different populations will also have different dietary needs or different cultural requirements and you have to take that into consideration as well.” - Morgan Crosby, Chief Strategy Officer at AIRINC
Tom Fleming, our Director of Client Development, led a lively fireside chat with Derek Gregath, Global Director of Client Development at NEI Global Relocation, exploring the collaborative journey behind building AltoCore Fully Managed — AltoVita’s innovative accommodation supply chain management platform — and the powerful efficiencies it has delivered.
“Historically with temporary living, we'd reach out to multiple partners at one time, try to collect as many options as we could and then offer those to the transferee if they fit the the budget and the client policy. Now you can imagine this is sent via email to each partner. So maybe three different emails go out at that point, and the Relocation Account Executive is sitting and waiting for those options to come back. They don't all come back at the same time. When they do come in, they're all in different formats. And at that point, you're trying to aggregate them into something that is presentable to the relocating employee. It took a lot of copying and pasting into an email trying to get those to be uniform. So, that took a lot of time. And as we know in the temp living space, timing is everything. A lot of times before you would hear back from the employee, maybe one of the options got booked out from underneath you. It was a very manual process.” - Derek Gregath, Global Director of Client Development at NEI Global Relocation
Hear more about our collaborative journey on our webinar with NEI.
“People are requesting gyms, they're requesting more space, internet, cable TV and all all sorts of things. Everyone who goes into temporary accommodation gets a welcome basket and we have customised that welcome basket to something usable. If you have kids we may get you something special for your kids. If you have pets you may get something for your pets. More customisation is expected in mobility programmes and we're really trying to customise it, obviously still with cost on our mind, but at the end of the day, you spend the money anyway so you may as well spend it where the employee wants it. Customisation and wellbeing is not a luxury anymore. It's something that has to be part of most policies when you think about talent retention and attraction.” - Berna Anderson, Director of HR, Global Mobility & HRBP at BD
AltoVita’s Co-founders, Vivi Himmel and Karolina Saviova delivered a powerful overview of the company, taking the audience on a journey from AltoVita’s origin story to its realised achievements and future vision.
AltoVita means ‘high life’, and whilst our logo has modernised over the years, our core value has never changed. Our mission has always been to provide an elevated living experience in every well-curated home, anywhere in the world. Over the past 8 years, we haven’t just built a platform. We’ve built an ecosystem, a movement, and we have a very strong product-market fit with Fortune 500 companies, Global 2000 companies or even those with very strong use cases.”
The Smart, Safe & Sustainable Summit once again proved itself as a leading industry event, gathering the brightest minds in global mobility and business travel while fostering meaningful connections.
Our next Summit will take place in Dubai in Spring 2026. Pre-registration is now open - save your seat here.