Corporate Travel (Still) in Flux

When we last visited the corporate travel side of the industry with OG Steve Singh about a year and a half ago, most of us were still kicking tires on ChatGPT and “agents” still referred to humans.

Fast forward to today, and the implications of agentic AI are reaching into every nook and cranny of even the most slow-moving corners of the industry, like corporate travel. With travelers getting more comfortable relying on LLMs to help them plan leisure travel, will they naturally extend that usage for their business trips?

And if so, what would that mean for the managed travel industrial complex that exists to optimize the budget and policy rules for corporate travel? Everything feels up for grabs, from how suppliers distribute their inventory and service the traveler, to how corporate travel managers ensure compliance and keep travelers safe, to how the TMCs (travel management companies) to whom much of this responsibility has been outsourced continue to earn the right to even exist.

On the M&A front, we’re seeing the gravitational force of scale take hold, with AMEX GBT’s acquisition of CWT (and subsequent rumors of them being up for sale) and Navan’s recent IPO.

And we haven’t even gotten to GDSes or NDC yet.

What does business travel look like for all these stakeholders in this moment of extended transformation? We’ll dig in with two industry experts to unpack where corporate travel is headed.

Follows

Gilad Berenstein – host

Cara Whitehill - host

Cory Garner — guest

Jay Boehmer — guest

Go Deeper

• Deloitte: Corporate Travel Forecast a Mixed Bag Amid Complex Conditions - Deloitte
• How Corporate Travel & Payments Could Change by 2030 - PhocusWire
• The State of Corporate Travel and Expense 2025 - Skift
• Meet Tomorrow’s Business Travelers - AMEX Global Business Travel
• How artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of travel and expense management - ITBrief