New GBTA research: AI, TMC innovation, and hotel retailing

Spotnana, Direct Travel, Marriott International, and the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) have released new research examining three forces shaping the future of managed corporate travel: artificial intelligence, TMC innovation and global program management, and hotel retailing.

Innovation and the Perfect Business Trip: AI, TMC Innovation, and Hotel Distribution surveyed 187 travel managers across North America and Europe in March 2026, building on last year’s research exploring the concept of The Perfect Trip.

Here are the top trends that emerged from our research. Download the full report here.

Buyers want AI, but have concerns

Corporate travel is one of the last areas of enterprise operations where AI’s effects remain largely invisible. Despite widespread adoption across finance, HR, and customer service, 58% of travel buyers say AI has had little or no impact on their travel program so far.

Adoption lags because AI features are only now being embedded into the tools buyers rely on daily. What buyers want from AI is clear:

• 95% are interested in predictive analytics for travel spend forecasting.
• 93% are interested in AI-driven report creation.
• 88% are interested in conversational booking through an OBT or TMC app.
• 87% are interested in AI-driven policy recommendations.
• 76% are interested in automated trip disruption management and rebooking.

Disruption management stands out as the near-term use case with the most upside. Today, rebooking a cancelled flight is often a manual, reactive process that leaves a traveler waiting on hold for an agent. AI has the potential to handle this automatically, and 70% of buyers are also interested in proactive rebooking triggered by weather forecasts.

Comfort levels vary based on what the AI is doing. Buyers are highly comfortable with AI that informs decisions:

• Generating custom reports: 92% comfortable
• Providing duty of care alerts and recommendations: 85% comfortable
• Proactively recommending flight changes due to weather: 78% comfortable

Comfort is lower for agentic use cases, where AI acts autonomously rather than recommending an action for a human to approve:

• Executing a booking change: 62% comfortable
• Automatically rebooking during a disruption: 57% comfortable

38% of buyers don’t know if their TMC is using AI in its workflows at all. Major TMCs are investing in AI, often under the hood, but buyers may not see it.

Key takeaway: Interest in AI is nearly universal, but adoption is in its early stages. The biggest near-term opportunity is disruption management.

Technology, service, and global pain points

When evaluating a potential TMC, buyers split their priorities almost evenly: technology accounts for 53% of the evaluation, and service accounts for 47%.

For global and multinational programs, the operational challenges run deep. 61% of buyers at global companies say managing travel across regions is a major or moderate challenge. The most commonly cited obstacles:

• Fragmented content and distribution (GDS, NDC, OTAs, local suppliers): 65%
• Data consolidation and normalization: 56%
• Reporting and benchmarking consistency across regions: 55%

The data infrastructure problem is especially acute. Only 12% of global travel programs have a consolidated view of their program from a single data source. Most pull from multiple siloed systems, and the fragmentation compounds as programs add tools. On average, global programs maintain:

• 5.3 separate OBT application instances
• 5.3 separate expense management instances
• 4.0 separate price assurance and fare auditing instances

When data from these tools doesn’t connect, travel managers work with an incomplete picture of their program. Only 68% of buyers say OBT data flows into a centralized analytics platform. For travel risk management tools, that figure drops to 32%. For third-party benchmarking tools, it’s 26%.

Content availability is a related friction point. More than half of buyers (54%) say the content available through their TMC or OBT is a major or moderate challenge, with inventory gaps and pricing discrepancies pushing travelers to book outside managed channels.

Key takeaway: Global programs are held back by fragmented technology and siloed data. Connecting booking, expense, and risk management data into a single platform would directly address the fragmentation challenges buyers cited most often.

Hotel retailing is ready for change

Hotel leakage remains one of the most persistent problems in managed travel. On average, buyers estimate that 32% of hotel bookings happen outside of managed channels.

The top pain point for self-service hotel bookings, by a wide margin, is “I found it cheaper somewhere else.” The industry has made progress, with platforms like Spotnana able to surface OTA rates alongside negotiated rates, but the problem goes beyond pricing.

Part of the issue is how hotel content is displayed. When an employee compares a company-negotiated rate against a cheaper consumer rate, they often can’t see what’s included in each. A negotiated rate covering breakfast, parking, and flexible cancellation may be the better deal, but the managed booking experience doesn’t always make that visible. The result: employees book the cheaper rate, purchase add-ons at the property, and the program loses both the booking and visibility into spending.

Attribute-based retailing has the potential to change this. Rather than presenting a room rate as a single bundled price, attribute-based retailing allows employees to see and purchase specific add-ons at the time of booking. Buyer interest in making specific amenities available to business travelers for purchase through the booking path:

• Parking: 66% interested
• Breakfast: 64% interested
• Early check-in: 62% interested
• Late check-out: 58% interested

51% of buyers say attribute-based shopping would improve the hotel experience for business travelers.

Split pay, a related feature, would allow employees to use a corporate card for the room rate and a personal card for out-of-policy amenities. Buyers estimate that 32% of their travelers would use it. Combined with richer add-on content and greater pricing transparency at the point of booking, split pay could reduce leakage while giving travelers more flexibility within policy.

Key takeaway: The “cheaper elsewhere” problem in corporate travel is as much about visibility as it is about price. New retailing models that surface add-ons and full costs at the time of booking could close the transparency gap that drives leakage.

Three trends, one direction

The research points to a managed travel industry at a turning point. AI investment is accelerating, global programs are feeling the real cost of fragmented infrastructure, and new hotel retailing advances are beginning to address long-standing challenges for travel managers.

Managed travel is catching up to where buyers want it to be.

Download the full report for complete findings.