Business travel forgot about people. Figame is here to remind it.

Somewhere along the way, business travel stopped being a service and became a ticket queue. A chatbot answers. A reference number arrives. And a PA is left refreshing an inbox at midnight while their exec sits in a departure lounge.

Figame thinks that's backwards, and it has come to the UK to say so.

Figame is an international corporate travel management company. Since 2009 it has grown to look after more than 450 organisations in a dozen countries, from the UK, Belgium and Denmark to Spain, Switzerland and the United States. Its clients include international organisations, EU agencies and global brands. This year it opened new teams in the UK and Spain, and it isn't planning a quiet arrival.

"We didn't come here to be another app with a nice login screen," says Mike Koumartzakis, Figame's CEO. "We built our own platform because the technology matters. But the technology was never the point. The person on the other end of the phone is the point."

The model is simple. Book the easy trips yourself in minutes, on web, iOS or Android, with policy and approvals built in. Hand the urgent, messy or last-minute ones to a real travel expert, on hand 24/7/365, wherever in the world your travellers are. Out of hours, it's the same team that books during the day, not an outsourced night desk.

International travel is where that matters most. A multi-city trip across three countries, with flights, hotels, rail and transfers, is everyday work for the team, and it all sits in one booking and on one invoice.

Ron Lala, who leads Figame in the UK, says the plan is to be louder than that. "We're going to be open about how this industry actually works. Who really picks up at 2am. What a '24/7 support' promise means in practice. What you should ask before you sign anything. PAs deserve to know."

It's a pointed message from a newcomer. Figame doesn't seem worried.

"This industry is people first," says Lala. "Our competitors don't seem to have realised that. We have. Come and test us on it." Figame was a sponsor of this year's PA Show Summit. Find out more at figame.com, or email Ron at r.lala@figame.com.