Top Travel Industry Lessons from 2025: Trends, Challenges, and Expert Insights

In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) became the go-to helper for everything, from complex data analysis to taking care of everyday travel conveniences, like snagging a late checkout or rebooking a flight. The year brought such perpetual difficulties as economic and political volatility, which affected prices and budgets. With employees working from everywhere and efficiency a critical goal, strengthening communications and building relationships were necessities. Against this backdrop, top 2025 travel trend themes such as sustainability, virtual payment solutions, and new distribution capabilities (NDC) remained key priorities. According to industry leaders, these forces are shaping both the biggest challenges and the most exciting opportunities in travel today.

Informed by interviews with five corporate travel leaders,  this blog offers insights to help industry peers reflect on how their own 2025 experiences compare—and uncover strategies to tackle business travel challenges while seizing new opportunities in the year ahead.

Business Travel Challenge: How to Confront Prices and Budgets?

Economic and regulatory uncertainties were hallmarks of 2025 and left corporate travel leaders contending with shifting prices and tighter budgets. For one, the result was unpredictable prices for flights and lodging in certain markets, as seen by Anne Delgado, director of travel and payment for SAP.  At Michigan State University, that meant scrutinising every dollar. “That’s been more critical this year than in all my years in the business,” says Ed Phillips, university travel manager.

How to Manage Prices and Budget

• Gaining insight into prices: By leaning more heavily into automation and AI tools that improved visibility into spending and traveller patterns, Delgado says.

• Stretching the budget: Michigan State stretched travel funds by using travel booking and reporting tools to pinpoint cases where the tax-exempt school mistakenly paid sales tax on hotel bills, identifying about 500 nights eligible for reimbursement. To minimise future problems, the university uses alerts within the booking tool to advise travellers of the issue and urges them to carry tax-exemption certificates. “More sophisticated analytics enable us to distill complex data into simpler, actionable insights,” says Phillips, observing that approaching business travel from new angles revealed “surprising ways to bring money back to the program.”

Business Travel Challenge: How Can You Strengthen Communication & Relationships?

Whether meeting in-person with colleagues, explaining the value of booking through approved channels, or simply replacing outdated policy language, corporate travel managers found communication and relationship-building essential parts of their jobs in 2025. Because if employees understand the reason for a rule, they’re more likely to follow it. And if colleagues are accustomed to working together and share a common mission, a travel program is more likely to have the support it needs.

How to Improve Communications Inside and Out

• Getting personal: In a world of virtual work, Delgado worked to bolster relationships with internal stakeholders like her human resources (HR) and finance colleagues, emphasising the importance of coffee chats and other face-to-face encounters. “Clearly explaining the importance and reasoning behind requests helps foster team alignment,” she says.

• Explaining the rules: If you want travellers to skip cheaper tickets for compliant ones, they must understand the implications of disregarding policy, according one travel manager. “We’re developing better training materials, like user guides or video content using AI tools. This year I’ve also focused on our onboarding for new hires, setting them up for success in understanding how to operate within our environment.”

• Building better partnerships: Phillips and his Michigan State University team focused on strengthening relationships with suppliers and their travel management company (TMC) partners through clearer communication and tighter alignment on priorities such as duty of care —while ending partnerships that no longer met program goals. “For example, we addressed hotels that failed to disable rate codes affecting agreements and conducted rate audits to ensure only valid contract hotels are bookable,” Phillips explains. “Our journey of discovery in 2025 has been eye-opening. We uncovered unexpected gaps in our duty-of-care processes—like missing invoices from our TMC partners—which limited our ability to know the whereabouts of employee and student group travel, in case of emergency. We’ve since reinforced the need to invoice all internal transportation bookings through TMC channels to ensure complete visibility and support when it matters most.”

• Tapping modern terminology: With tech-savvy staff and students, Michigan State has promoted mobile-ready travel apps and updated its traveller communications to use modern terms like “taps” instead of “clicks.” As Phillips notes, “With fewer people using keyboards, the notion of clicking is quickly becoming obsolete.”

Business Travel Challenge: How to Leverage AI?

Within their roles—and even when travelling themselves—corporate travel leaders are “dipping their toes” into AI. Some found AI a tremendous time saver for menial tasks while others began using it to analyse data or consider it for things like comparing lengthy contracts. Despite employees being given tools and encouragement from top leaders, a challenge remains: finding the time for AI training that could foster proficiency, observes one of our customers who manages travel and expense at a global manufacturing company.

“Some of the new technology—especially AI—that’s enhancing end-user experience worked
even better than we hoped.”
Anne Delgado, Director Travel and Payment, Global Procurement Organisation, SAP

How to Put AI to Work

• Testing tasks: One travel leader has used AI to summarise and rewrite emails and analyse data as she’s experimented to become comfortable with the technology. “It’s clear that AI can enhance productivity and streamline processes, but balancing its use with my own insights is key,” she said.

• Efficiently doing tasks: Ask a generative-AI powered chatbot for a late checkout, and it finds the hotel and connects an agent. Ask it to hunt flight details and it assembles options for changes and fares. They’re both chores where she also lets AI do the work so she could focus on other tasks. She’s also led 15 employee training sessions to encourage AI adoption, though time constraints remain a constant challenge for salespeople, analysts, and others. Still, “having the CEO's endorsement and urging leaders to enhance efficiency through AI is incredibly beneficial to getting employees on board.”

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Other Top Challenges: Sustainability, Virtual Cards, NDC, Compliance

Every business has unique challenges and opportunities that drive priorities, automation, and use of intelligent technology. The business-by-business variations play out in the range of other corporate travel challenges that leaders report in 2025.

How Can I Promote and Manage Sustainability?

With evolving sustainability regulations around the world, “our company has begun taking these factors more seriously, specifically around business travel,” shared one leader. And when it comes to fragmented sustainability data, “emerging technologies are helping to streamline this process, and we expect to see even greater progress in 2026.”

He isn’t alone in the focus on sustainability, which he sees as a permanent focus rather than a fleeting fad. At SAP, Delgado says, “We continue to push forward on sustainability, which I see as a constant to every travel program. As part of this effort, we’re deepening partnerships with suppliers to pursue shared sustainability goals, not just focusing on cost.”

How Can We Explain New Distribution Capability to Travellers?

New distribution capabilities (NDC) brings a slew of options and challenges involving low-cost carriers and countless other flight and travel components. Whether seat selection and other features are already included in the fare is just an example demonstrating the need for managers to bring employees up to speed. “This complexity can confuse travellers, particularly those who may notice cheaper options elsewhere. The complexities around NDC have required us to educate our travellers about these industry changes and nuances.”

How Are Virtual Cards (and Costs) Evolving?

Virtual cards are a valuable and secure payment tool for Alpine Air Express, a growing cargo hauler serving western and midwestern U.S. states. “This system has significantly enhanced our overall security and efficiency, allowing us to focus more on delivering seamless travel experiences while reconciling statements in record time.,” says Amanda Lack, travel and expense administrator. But there are hitches: incompatibility with digital wallets, inflexible notification options, underdeveloped dashboard options, , and most importantly, rising costs that could determine their continued use. “As virtual card platform costs rise annually, we're faced with questions about … whether these subscriptions are still justified and if they'll continue to be manageable at future price points,” says Lack, noting that for now, Alpine Air is closely watching the evolution of virtual cards and continually assessing their use and cost.

How Can We Lessen the Compliance Burden on Employees?

Alpine Air Express employees naturally travel a lot, and with increased volume in 2025, the problem of getting e-receipts from hotels became more pronounced. “We strive to treat our travellers like royalty, minimising the time they spend checking in and out at the hotel front desk. ,” says Lack. So instead of asking  travellers to wait for hotel receipts of room and tax, Lack leaned on their TMC. “Our relationship with our TMC has become even more crucial this year, especially given our smaller company size and round-the-clock travel needs.,” Lack says. “Our TMC continues to manage all our relationships with hotel properties. In addition to negotiating consistent rates, our TMC arranges for the places we stay most often to keep a corporate card on file and email receipts to our office. We implemented a white-glove service with our TMC, featuring a single primary contact who handles everything for us. Whether it’s a problem our office encounters encounters or our travellers face in the field, we reach out to the same TMC representative.”

Looking Forward: Advice for Travel Leaders in 2026

As is clear from the trends, travel managers will continue to work on 2025 challenges in the year ahead. They, of course, have perspectives on upcoming trends and thoughts on where fellow managers should direct their energy in 2026.

Delgado advises:

“Keep sustainability front and centre. It’s no longer a ‘nice to have’; it’s becoming a real business expectation.”

“Stay adaptable and see challenges as an opportunity for enhancement. The market changes fast while the travel and payment industry is still bound to processes and procedures that were put in place decades ago. Keep investing in tools that give you good data quality; it makes decision-making and internal reporting much easier.” 

While Phillips recommends:

“Focus on building strong, reliable partnerships by supporting suppliers who align with your goals, and policies. And address issues directly with those who don’t. Clear, honest communication—even when difficult—reinforces trust, demonstrates your commitment, and strengthens mutually beneficial relationships.”

Other advice:

“Embrace continuous learning and collaboration. With many seasoned travel professionals leaving the profession during COVID, fewer people have full expertise, so actively share knowledge, rely on teamwork, and leverage diverse perspectives to navigate the evolving travel landscape successfully.”

FAQ: Business Travel in 2025 & Beyond

1. How are travel managers handling unpredictable prices and budgets?
With economic uncertainty and shifting rates, organisations like SAP and Michigan State University looked to automation and analytics to track spending and recover lost funds, such as sales tax refunds on hotel stays.

2. What role did communication play in travel management in 2025?
Clear, modern, and timely communication are essential. Travel leaders updated policies, held face-to-face meetings, and used relatable language (“tap” instead of “click”) to make compliance easier and boost employee understanding.

3. How is AI reshaping business travel management?
AI tools now summarise emails, analyse contracts and reporting, personalise travel options, and simplify booking changes. Leaders say AI improves efficiency and does not replace human judgment, but making time for training is a hurdle.

4. What other challenges shaped 2025 travel programs?
Managers are focusing on sustainability, new distribution capability (NDC), virtual payment cards, and compliance. Each brings complexity to manage and opportunities to pursue.

5. How can companies balance innovation with traveller experience?
From sustainability tracking to TMC partnerships that handle receipts and support travellers directly, success depends on combining digital efficiency with personalised service.

Get Ahead: SAP Concur 2026 Travel & Expense Trends & Predictions

As 2026 approaches, adaptability will be just as critical as strategy. For finance and travel leaders, that will mean keeping a pulse on emerging trends, from breakthroughs in agentic AI to ongoing industry consolidation, anticipating how they might shape what is to come, and being prepared to pivot as needed.

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