Business travel: three forces are reshaping the industry and imposing a new model
The column by Alexandre Veau, partner at Impact Consultants
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In a few years, booking a business trip will no longer be a one-off event, but a continuous interaction between an employee, an intelligent agent, expert advisors, and a corporate system – DepositPhotos.com, violetkaipa
Business travel is currently undergoing a historic shift. This is not a temporary post-pandemic adjustment, but a lasting redefinition of its foundations.
Travelers expect a radically different experience, companies are imposing new standards, and technology is acting as a catalyst.
Three forces are converging:
– Travelers no longer accept traditional interfaces and journeys.
– They demand both comprehensive content and simplicity of decision-making.
– Companies are imposing integrated, controllable, and responsible solutions.
Recent market developments—the rebranding of TravelPerk to Perk, the strategic alliance between Amex GBT and SAP Concur, the acquisition of Supertripper by Marietton, and Spotnana’s positioning on Offers & Orders standards—illustrate this phase of accelerated restructuring.
Business travelers want to book differently
Users no longer want to book, they want to chat.
They no longer want to search, they want to get results.
They no longer want to compare, they want an intelligent response to their needs.
Trained by Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, and now ChatGPT, business travelers have transposed their B2C reflexes into their B2B usage. The expected experience becomes conversational, immediate, and contextualized.
According to Amadeus Hospitality, 54% of business travelers say they are willing to let AI make reservations on their behalf, and 50% expect it to provide personalized recommendations (Travel Dreams, 2024).
Phocuswright confirms this shift: « Generative artificial intelligence now dominates thinking and promises to transform the way we plan, book, and experience our travels. » – Phocuswright, Travel Innovation Guide 2024 (PhocusWire)
Business Travel News describes a paradigm shift: “Agentic AI takes care of the thankless tasks of travel: searching, comparing, checking compliance. The agent does the work, not the user.” – BTN, 2025
The traveler no longer interacts with an SBT as if it were a form; they express an intention, and the tool automatically orchestrates a trip that complies with policy and context.
In the short term, a growing proportion of simple trips will be largely automated, with human value concentrated on exceptions and complex trade-offs.
Comprehensive content and personalized recommendations: the new equation
Second key factor: access to content.
Travelers want to see everything—GDS, NDC, direct airline connections, rail, low-cost, expanded accommodation—but without cognitive effort, with intelligent sorting in line with their profile and travel policy.
BCD Travel emphasizes that the value of AI lies above all “in operational efficiency and personalization of the traveler experience.”
Accenture describes a trajectory where GenAI enables “a smarter, much more personalized and fully integrated booking mode, capable of designing and then booking the ideal trip for a given individual.”
The challenge is therefore no longer to add content, but to structure it.
Platforms such as Spotnana seek to break down silos (GDS, NDC, rail, direct connect) to offer a global search, while retaining corporate servicing and control capabilities. The NDC integrations of the various airlines, including ancillaries and self-service changes, illustrate this logic: more content, but better contextualized.
The GBTA barometer highlights a clear observation: the market suffers less from a lack of offers than from an excess of complexity: lack of clarity, information deficit, complexity of journeys.
Agentic AI addresses this problem precisely: it absorbs the complexity in the back office and provides the traveler with only a limited number of relevant options, enriched with proactive alerts (delays, etc.).
Companies impose integration and management
Third decisive factor: corporate requirements.
Travel, procurement, finance, and HR departments are converging on a single goal: to end fragmentation through simplification and better control.
Organizations now expect an integrated travel and expense platform that covers the entire travel cycle: request, approval, booking, payment, expense reports, CO₂ tracking, duty of care, and consolidated reporting.Market movements are revealing:
– Travel Perk becomes Perk, and claims an AI-native Travel + Spend platform, with 67% automation of administrative work, eliminating “shadow work”—the dozens of manual actions related to reservations, invoices, and expenses.
– Amex GBT and SAP Concur are launching Complete, sending a strong signal: for the first time, a global TMC and a world leader in T&E are combining their infrastructures to offer a unified experience (booking + servicing + payment + expense).
– Marietton integrates Supertripper, illustrating a technology-driven consolidation aimed at addressing all needs, from premium consulting to native self-booking.
The TMC is thus evolving from a service provider to a travel operating system, connected to finance and HR functions.
A future shaped by orchestration, technology… and human expertise
The convergence of these three forces now clearly outlines the trajectory of business travel over the next three to five years.
On the one hand, TMC platforms capable of investing heavily in technology, data, and artificial intelligence will become the architects of travel programs, orchestrating content, compliance, security, financial management, and CSR commitments.
Their value will be based less on transactions and more on the expertise of travel advisors, who will be able to assist companies and travelers with complex situations, sensitive trade-offs, and high-value-added decisions.
At the same time, conversational AI agents will establish themselves as the preferred interface for travelers, integrated into everyday tools such as collaborative messaging, CRM environments, and office suites.
They will make booking smoother and more invisible by absorbing operational complexity and offering contextualized choices.
Ultimately, these two trajectories will not be mutually exclusive. The most advanced TMC platforms will provide the technological framework, AI agents will provide the interaction layer, and human teams will provide expertise, advice, and accountability.
The strategic challenge will therefore not be AI versus TMC, but rather who can effectively orchestrate technology, human expertise, data, and corporate rules.
In a few years’ time, booking a business trip will no longer be a one-off event, but a continuous interaction between an employee, an intelligent agent, expert advisors, and a corporate system.
Travel will become something that is managed in real time, optimized according to business, financial, human, and environmental objectives.
For the first time in a long time, business travel is not undergoing transformation: it is driving it.
Written by Alexandre VEAU on Tuesday, December 16, 2025