Define your policy rule set as structured configuration: maximum fare thresholds by cabin class and route distance, preferred airline/hotel vendor lists, advance booking requirements, and approval workflows.
At search time, tag each result with a policy compliance status (in-policy, out-of-policy-with-reason, requires-approval) by evaluating the offer price and attributes against the traveler's policy tier.
For out-of-policy selections, capture a justification code from the traveler (e.g., lowest-cost-not-available, meeting-requirement) before allowing the booking to proceed.
For selections requiring manager approval, create an approval request record with all offer details and a deeplink back to the booking; notify the approver via email or your HR system webhook.
Once approved, re-check the offer is still available and within a price tolerance of the original quote before completing the booking, since fares change during approval delays.
Write a compliance event to your reporting store for every booking, capturing the policy decision, justification, approver, and final cost for management reporting.
Known gotchas
Fare availability often changes during approval workflows — a policy-approved booking may fail if the original fare sells out; always re-price with a tolerance check before ticketing.
Traveler policy tiers (employee grade) must be fetched from your HR or identity provider at booking time; stale cached policy data can result in incorrect enforcement.
Least-cost logic must account for total cost including seat fees, baggage, and schedule convenience — a bare lowest fare that results in a 6am departure may cost more in productivity than a marginally higher fare.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp