The Future of Business Travel
With the right technology, investing in business travel can create revenue. Photo credit: Getty Images
More than 1 million people travel for business in the United States every day. Hundreds of hotel reservations are booked each minute for corporate travel accommodations. And every month, tens of millions in reimbursements are processed. The energy of business and travel is frenetic and constant.
If you're on the organizational end of confirming that each employee books in-policy travel, arrives at each destination without any disruptions, and that excess spending is at a minimum, managing business travel can also be overwhelming. Shopping for flights, hotel rooms, and ground travel options across a dynamic pricing environment with different channel options and rate packages being offered is an overload of information—and asking, 'Can I change my ticket?' or, 'Is the room cancelable?' for every booking isn't the best use of anyone's time. Booking travel shouldn't have to be hard, but it is.
According to recent polls, 45 percent of travel managers say that negotiating with hotels has become more challenging in the last five years, and that they're spending more time negotiating prices, comparing proposals, and researching travel options. But without that information, a company can leave (a lot of) money on the table. The key is using technology to ease the workload.
A multinational company with 52,000 employees traveling globally each year reached a tipping point with its travel management plan recently. Despite working with a travel management company (TMC) for years, the bottom line proved employees were still struggling with cost visibility, accessing flexible fares, and booking accommodations with in-policy hotels. To make a change—and to create an easier booking process for their employees—integrated, automated mass booking solutions within their systems were needed. After partnering with American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) to integrate new features and services like waitlisting, bulk cancellations, and hotel booking into their employee travel process, they achieved millions in annual savings.
Aside from massive savings, travel has been simplified for the company's employees, too. When a sudden change of aircraft was needed, employees booked and ticketed the change within an hour, saving time and money. The attention within the team that would have gone to a disruption like that is now given to improving other travel processes, like consolidating contractor travel and extending discounted airline rates to contractors.
It's anecdotes like these that offer a glimpse into how, in the world of business travel, a little bit of innovation can go a long way.
Innovations in Business Travel
Despite online meetings, communication technologies, tariffs, and national entry restrictions—all of which can factor into a decrease in bookings—business travel isn't going anywhere. In February, 80 percent of Amex GBT's top 100 customers said their travel spending will either remain steady or increase this year. These stats are coming in after years of post-pandemic increases in business travel, and the new 'remain steady' numbers are still clocking in larger than pre-pandemic figures. That's why leading companies are leveraging technology—not to replace business travel, but to elevate it..
'Better' often looks like simplifying the process for employees who book their own travel and those who book travel for others. A whopping 94 percent of travel and expense management decision-makers at companies want an all-in-one solution for travel, reimbursement, and expense management, while only 58 percent of those same decision-makers currently understand all the travel-related fees they are currently dealing with.
That's why Amex GBT has spent more than 100 years building relationships within the industry to create the most valuable marketplace in travel, which brings global travel buyers and sellers together in one place. Access to the marketplace is enabled by Amex GBT's range of technology solutions, which are fit to meet the specific preferences of a company's travel program. Here, users can experience a customized and self-service environment—from travel booking and expensing to automatic rebooking and reimbursement. As a global business travel leader, Amex GBT manages travel for 20,000 companies and operates in 120 countries. All of that familiarity has led to a unique approach to simplifying every user experience.
'What innovation looks like to our customers is what matters,' says John Sturino, senior vice president of product and engineering. 'Our customers are saying, 'I see this feature here and I want to see it here.'' To him, innovation means taking something from one context and applying it to a different context—like automatically contacting travelers who are experiencing a travel delay or disruption by notifying them of the effects it has on their travel and then asking if they need support, instead of waiting for travelers to initiate customer support contact. This improves the customer experience in ways that they didn't know were even possible.
That inspiration and approach is how certain solutions and products offered by Amex GBT came to be. Amex GBT Select allows companies to incorporate Amex GBT tools into existing technology to fill any gaps that exist within their current program without a total rehaul. Similarly, companies that prefer using a third-party booking tool can integrate that software as well. For the spending and reimbursement aspect of business travel, Amex GBT Neo allows managers to easily track their company travel spend while helping employees stay within policy and get reimbursed quickly.
A New Era of Efficiency
No matter where you look these days, every company, industry, and platform is touting its latest AI-driven tool, promising ease, efficiency, and problem-solving capabilities. But one industry where AI hasn't hit its stride yet is travel. The travel industry is highly fragmented, with numerous players and constant changes, making it challenging to integrate AI across ecosystems. Additionally, travel is one area where customers report preferring traditional, human-to-human interactions over AI-driven services. According to recent research, 64 percent of US-based travelers prefer live agents to support them when facing disruption.
So even though the latest AI technology is easy to get excited about, Amex GBT approaches its platform from the lens of a 100-plus-year history, putting every idea through its paces before applying it to the business travel experience.
The first opportunity to create efficiency in travel is often through relationships. Then comes the technology. Currently, Amex GBT is working with and has access to 600+ airlines, 60+ rail providers, 40 rental car agencies in 3,300 locations globally, more than 2 million properties across 180 countries, and 18K+ employees globally. Business travel booked by Amex GBT, on average, represents 188,000 air segments flown daily and 146,000 hotel beds filled nightly. Customers benefit from the brand's generations-old relationships through the tech used in Amex GBT's products.
This hybrid approach to travel solutions results in 24/7 support, access to flexible fares, up to 50 percent savings on the best available rate at certain properties, and built-in carbon impact data to empower customers to source the most sustainable travel option available through Amex GBT Egencia.
A Dollar Saved and a Dollar Earned
Business travel fosters innovation, collaboration, and positive organizational change in a way that nothing else does. In-person meetings, unstructured time, and shared travel experiences connect teams and create genuine rapport through the subtle, hard-to-measure effects of something as small as eye contact, a smile, or a nod. With the opportunity to come together comes the chance to create great ideas that may not come to life in any other environment, which is why roughly 50 percent of employees prefer in-person meetings. When you look at it that way, where you go matters.
How you get there matters, too, whether you're looking through the lens of sustainability, user experience, or revenue. Nearly a third of C-suite leaders credit a third of their company's sales growth in 2023 to traveling for in-person meetings, and more than 90 percent believe they would lose customers without business travel. For small- and medium-size companies, every dollar spent on business travel generates an average of $12 in revenue, largely driven by new customer acquisition.
An investment in business travel is just that—an investment. But using technology to better position how that investment looks—and the experience your team receives—creates a value that, arguably, can't be quantified.
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