Travel Managers Are Fed Up With Their Corporate Booking Tools
Photo Credit: A business traveler gets into an Uber. Uber
Skift Take
Corporate travel managers are done making excuses for legacy booking tools. With low adoption, clunky interfaces, and limited inventory still plaguing the user experience, companies are moving fast to rethink their tech stack.
Many travel managers are disenchanted with their corporate booking tools.
A recent Global Business Travel Association of Survey of U.S. and Canada-based corporate travel managers found:
- 57% reported friction with online booking experiences for unprofiled guest travel [contractors, job candidates etc.].
- 50% cite issues with meeting and event travel.
- 64% of buyers said managing exchanges and cancellations is a pain point.
- 54% said their tools struggled with unused tickets.
- 46% cited limited access to New Distribution Capability (NDC) fares.
Business travelers are definitely feeling that frustration, as well.
The survey also found that 81% of travel managers responded that hotel bookings made outside the corporate booking tool grew or stayed the same, and 67% of air bookings did likewise.
SAP Concur, Navan, CTM, Egencia, Cytric, GetThere, TravelPerk, and MyCWT are among the bigger corporate booking tools in the market.
What Business Travelers Want
One global travel manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Skift that the company’s current booking tool, SAP Concur, feels slow, outdated, and doesn’t provide the modern user experience travelers expect.
Employees bypass them because the experience is clunky, the inventory is poor, and "they just feel old," the travel manager said.
The company's employees, want the types of features they see on supplier sites, including a more fluid search experience with better visuals, and the ability to earn loyalty perks.
She is not alone.
Sushant Saini, another global travel manager, confirmed that even when these platforms are perceived as user-friendly, they still have critical issues.
In his previous role as corporate travel & expense manager at a global financial services firm,Saini said the most common complaint was the limited inventory available on corporate booking tools compared to airline and hotel websites.
“We often had to manually process bookings through our in-house team using GDS because the OBT (Online Booking Tool) didn’t show real-time availability,” he said.
SAP Concur and Navan's Take
SAP Concur, in a statement, acknowledged the weaknesses of legacy systems.
However, the company emphasized that it’s actively addressing these issues by migrating users to the replatformed Concur Travel.
“Today we can confidently say new Concur Travel provides the broadest, most expansive travel content available in the industry,” said Chris Juneau, head of product marketing at SAP Concur. “We’ve expanded NDC content to over 10 global carriers and support major low-cost carriers worldwide, giving travelers more options and coverage across 70 countries.”
Juneau said Concur Travel has direct integrations American Express GBT, BCD, CWT RoomIt, FCTG, and HRS, delivering policy compliant hotels.
The company noted that customers still experiencing issues are likely those who haven’t yet migrated to the new platform.
Navan, meanwhile, is positioning itself as a full-stack alternative for companies fed up with fragmented, outdated tools.
Rich Liu, CEO of Navan Travel, said the company is hearing from clients who are frustrated with low adoption, poor user experience, and the limitations of legacy platforms.
In response, Navan has built a single platform that combines travel, payments, and expenses, designed around automation and employee-first usability, he said
Rather than layering features onto legacy infrastructure, the company has focused on rethinking the entire workflow to reduce friction and improve visibility for both travelers and administrators.
Liu also emphasized that simply upgrading tools isn’t enough. He pointed out that real transformation happens when smarter platforms can be matched with clearer travel policies and better oversight across the organization.
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