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10 minutes readContents
- The true scale of the problem
- The hidden costs of unmanaged business travel
- Beyond cost: When visibility matters most
- Why companies finally switch
- Ready to see what Roundtrip can do for your business?
The true scale of the problem
When spreadsheets stop being enough
When businesses first launch, spreadsheets are typically king. Let’s be honest – they work very effectively, particularly for tracking things like employee travel.
But while they worked well when 12 employees travelled, the company grew and now there are 107 regularly on the move around the world. Your Finance Manager sighs as they face a tough session of balancing expense claims, chasing invoices, and mentally preparing for that awkward chat with the employee who dined in a Michelin-starred restaurant with no approval.
This is the mid-market reality
The frustration of unmanaged business travel has become something of a standard issue across mid-market companies globally. SMEs with over 100 employees and no formal business travel policy are now the majority in many mid-market segments.
Photo: PeopleImages / Shutterstock.com
The cost is growing – fast
As the cost of individual trips has increased significantly in the last two years, uncontrolled booking is far more expensive than it used to be. According to data from a 2025 Euromonitor report, 65% of global business travel spend is still unmanaged, highlighting that this is far from a niche case.
With the average business trip now costing $1,128, which is reportedly up around 35% year-over-year, travel can become a colossal cost. As potentially thousands of trips are made each year, the scale of the problem is much larger than many companies realise. It’s no wonder the global corporate travel market is growing so rapidly.
Roundtrip insight
Our data shows that, by digitalising many of the processes, clients save 15% on average hotel costs compared to consumer booking sites. Book a demo and chat with our team today to see how Roundtrip can do for your business.
The hidden costs of unmanaged business travel
What you can see on the invoice
A quick search of United Airlines fares shows that, in 2026, a return flight from Rome to North Carolina’s business capital Charlotte can cost anywhere from €700 to €1,000 per traveler (depending on the season and how far in advance the bookings are made). When there, your average business hotel can easily cost upwards of €120 per night — and that’s before you add in dining, airport transfers, and ride hailing.
However, these very visible expenses are just part of what a business trip really costs — the tip of the travel iceberg, so to speak. The invisible costs comprise everything that happens around the booking.
What the expense report doesn’t show
For example, your finance team may spend significant time balancing patchy expense claims and duplicate invoices, slowing reconciliation and delaying visibility over the true travel spend. This time may not be tracked as a direct travel cost — unlike, say, a taxi to the station — yet can be seen as a direct consequence of it.
Unfortunately, tracking policy violations is rarely instant. These violations may surface much later in an expense report, perhaps weeks after a decision has already been made.
Photo: Worawee Meepian / Shutterstock.com
Why companies are starting to act
Without consolidated booking data, it becomes impossible to negotiate supplier rates or identify patterns in spending.
This is one convincing reason why companies are beginning to implement corporate travel cost control and move towards managed travel. Notably, companies with disciplined travel policy enforcement typically achieve 17–30% higher revenuesthan those without, according to 2025 research from Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).
How Roundtrip helped Ocrim take control of its travel spend
For example, Ocrim — an Italian mechanical engineering company with 270 employees — originally managed their company travel through different channels, including popular OTAs, travel agencies and direct hotel websites. While this approach worked for a time, as travel volumes increased, so too did the time it took to organise trips.
By switching to managed travel with Roundtrip, Ocrim’s finance team could clearly see their real-time spend rather than retrospectively fighting with policy violations and confusion. They quickly saw the benefit from more simplicity, speed and visibility, with clear reporting for expenses and policy tracking.
Chiara Zovadelli, Ocrim’s travel manager, told us that the company now saves approximately 10–15% compared to previous booking methods.
Sergiu Les
Managing Director CTM
Our Managing Director CTM, Sergiu Les, explains: “Most companies don’t realise how much unmanaged travel actually costs — not just financially, but in wasted time and risk to employees. When every employee books travel their own way, you lose visibility of where your people are and where your money goes, not to mention the ability to negotiate better rates. Managed travel isn’t about restricting your teams — it’s about giving finance the control they need, travelers the experience they deserve, and the business a foundation to actually optimise one of its largest discretionary spend categories. The companies that make the switch rarely look back.”
Beyond cost: When visibility matters most
Unmanaged travel’s hidden liability
For companies across Europe, unmanaged travel is largely seen as a budgeting issue, yet, in reality, it’s a duty of care problem — a big risk for HR, legal, and the company as a whole.
When employees book flights and hotels through personal accounts and consumer travel sites, your company loses visibility over where your team actually are. Sure, your employee may arrive in the right place, but from an operational perspective they have effectively disappeared from your company’s travel ecosystem.
The moment visibility becomes critical
The problem becomes most concerning when something goes wrong.
For example, a flight cancelled due to thunder, an ongoing rail strike, civil unrest, or even a medical emergency can suddenly leave you scrambling to establish who’s travelling, where they’re staying and how to actually get hold of them. Without a centralised booking system, rerouting travelers or providing support becomes difficult.
Research from Peoplesafe shows that 75% of workers have safety concerns when traveling for business, while 69% of commuters are concerned about safety during their journey, especially during unsociable hours.
Photo: Alliance Images / Shutterstock.com
Back in Frankfurt — where the duty of care gap shows
Maria experienced exactly this in Frankfurt. When her train was cancelled due to a rail strike, there was no centralised system flagging her location and no emergency contact to call. From her company’s perspective, she had simply disappeared. There was no way to reroute her, no way to confirm she was safe, and no one empowered to step in and help.
From best practice to legal requirement
This is not simply an administrative inconvenience. In many jurisdictions, duty of care is a legal obligation, not simply a sensible recommendation. Companies operating across Italy, Germany and Kazakhstan are expected to take reasonable steps to protect employees as they travel for work.
Ultimately, knowing where every traveler is at any moment is a legal baseline and should not be taken lightly.
How Roundtrip gave Expo Events Consulting full visibility over every trip
As Roundtrip’s intuitive interface provides a clear overview of all trips — including who is traveling, where and when they are traveling, and what has already been paid for — day-by-day visibility is improved. Meanwhile, company stress is reduced and the travel risk to employees is minimised.
This was certainly the case for our client, Expo Events Consulting — a UAE-based business events and exhibition services company. After their switch to managed travel, they no longer have to juggle multiple booking tools, chase confirmations or wonder exactly where their employees are at a given moment.
With business travel management consolidated into a single platform, the impact for Expo Events Consulting was immediate: booking speed increased up to five times, manual coordination and follow-ups were significantly reduced, and stress levels also dropped thanks to clear visibility and control.
Why companies finally switch
Taking the plunge on managed travel rarely comes down to a groundbreaking report or a recommendation. Instead, a switch is made because something significant happens within the company.
We’ve narrowed down three common triggers that help explain why companies tend to switch to managed travel.
Budget — costs higher than expected
For some companies, the switch is purely financial. The finance team are unnerved as a finance review reveals travel and expense costs are far higher than were expected. This often comes with no trail as to what was approved, booked or reimbursed, compared to what was actually approved in the first place.
Compliance — when bookings happen without a policy
One of your employees decides to book an opulent spa hotel for a week — and who can blame them? After all, there was no written policy saying the maximum spend per day was €100, so the booking was made in good faith. However, the subsequent expense report results in an awkward conversation. Nobody can blame the employee, because the true problem is the absence of a system.
Growth — when the company scales faster than its travel setup
Every company loves growth — a new office, hitting 100 employees, or even expanding into a new country. But suddenly, the patchwork system of WhatsApp, personal cards and monthly reconciliation struggles to scale with the company. Your travel manager determines that this new phase of growth needs new infrastructure.
Research from Deloitte’s 2025 Corporate Travel Study reveals that 74% of travel managers planned to expand travel budgets, while 49% of business travellers said they now always use corporate booking tools such as a corporate travel management platform.
Roundtrip insight
According to the Roundtrip team, these three triggers are rarely isolated. Companies that begin by questioning travel spend soon uncover wider compliance issues, while organisations experiencing rapid growth frequently find that visibility and control deteriorate at the same time.
Having worked with businesses at different stages of growth, the team has observed a recurring pattern: unmanaged travel tends to function adequately until a certain threshold is reached. Beyond that point, the burden of administration increases and valuable travel data starts to disappear into a sea of emails, spreadsheets and personal booking accounts.
Photo: Miljan Zivkovic / Shutterstock.com
The simple move to managed travel
When it comes to travel management, the answer should be considered seriously. Implementing a corporate travel management platform like Roundtrip is fast and achievable, even for a company truly set in their ways. It doesn’t require a multi-month IT project — companies are typically booking in the new system within days.
Roundtrip insight
From booking to reporting, Roundtrip keeps everything on one platform, allowing your team to travel faster, spend smarter and stay in full control, while enjoying the full support of a real team of humans. As Ocrim’s travel manager Chiara Zovadelli, highlighted, “It’s not just a platform, but a real work companion. From the account manager to the support team, real people are ready to help at every stage of the job.”
Ready to see what Roundtrip can do for your business?
Forcing employees and finance teams to cope with a messy unmanaged business travel system is worth reconsidering — especially when the solution is easier to use and more cost-effective than your current system.
Frankfurt — and what came next for the team
Just ask Maria in Frankfurt. What began as a routine business trip ended with a cancelled train, no clear support and a growing sense of isolation. Just a few weeks later, her finance team was still trying to make sense of the costs and inconsistencies that followed.
If Maria’s experience — or any of the three triggers — sounds familiar, the practical next step isn’t a procurement process, but a 30-minute conversation to understand whether what you’re doing now is costing you more than you think.
Book a demo and chat with our team today.
Cover image: PeopleImages / Shutterstock.com
