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Travel managers are expected to produce the right numbers quickly and defend them. Corporate travel reporting now includes proving the value of the travel program itself, not just the return on a single trip. Longtime travel buyer Maria Chevalier, now CEO of Grasp, put the stakes plainly to Business Travel News (BTN): A travel team can lose credibility over a single wrong data point.
That pressure is running into a data problem. In a survey of more than 200 corporate travel buyers across North and South America, conducted by Business Travel Show America (BTSA) and reported by Business Travel News, more than 42% said at least one category of their TMC’s data and reporting left them open to added scrutiny. Only 16% were fully satisfied with the data their TMC provides. Another 39% said they get almost everything they need.
Buyers also pointed to where the data falls short. Forecasting and predictive insights led the list at more than 34%, followed by traveler behavior and preferences at 33%, compliance and leakage data at 29%, supplier performance at 28%, and real-time traveler tracking at nearly 25%.
The list reads like a wish list for a modern travel program. The useful question is where a program should start.
The survey identifies where buyers want better reporting. But several industry leaders point to a more fundamental concern: the quality and consistency of the data behind it.
Tami Pharr, a senior corporate travel manager at Zillow, made the point that programs are now asked to manage forward, not report backward, and that the reporting portal a TMC provides rarely lines up with the questions a program actually needs to answer. Her sharper point was about quality. The missing data sets do not help much, she said, until the data a program already receives is "clean, consistent, and defined the same way every time."
That is the part buyers feel every month. AI has made analysis faster, so the analysis has pulled ahead of the data feeding it. Pharr described using an AI assistant to condense two years of booking data across two platforms and rank spend by carrier, work that previously took days.
The speed only helps if the two platforms define that spending consistently. Otherwise, the analysis can produce misleading conclusions, regardless of how quickly it is completed.
Before adding new reports, buyers should make sure the numbers they already receive are reliable and traceable to their underlying bookings.
Larger programs have started moving TMC data into their own warehouses and dashboards, and AI is bringing that option within reach of smaller programs too. The reason is practical. Buyers want to ask their own questions, benchmark against peers, and run their own AI, and they cannot do that on data they do not trust.
Industry data leaders make the same point from the other side. Mat Orrego, CEO of Cornerstone, has argued that travel data has to be cleaned up, checked for quality, and standardized before anyone benchmarks it or feeds it to a model. The TMC’s data is still the critical input. It just has to arrive in a state a buyer can build on.
Travel management companies have an important role in making that possible. Buyers need reliable, clearly defined data they can access and use in their own reporting systems, without depending on their TMC to perform every analysis.
When evaluating a TMC’s reporting capabilities, buyers should look for several key features. They should also ask how easily those tools can answer real questions about spending, savings, compliance, and traveler activity.
Reporting also influences how well other corporate travel management platform features work, particularly policy controls, payment processes, and system integrations.
Consistency deserves particular attention when buyers compare reports or review spending with finance. A figure can be accurate within one report but difficult to reconcile with another if the underlying calculations differ.
“Ask your TMC how cancellations, refunds, and unused ticket credits are reflected in your spending reports,” said Carol Del Giudice, account executive at Christopherson. “If two reports show different totals, your team should be able to understand why. Otherwise, you can spend more time explaining the discrepancy than analyzing your travel program.”
Christopherson Business Travel built its reporting around these principles, with Andavo’s reporting capabilities giving travel managers self-service access to their program data.
Andavo’s travel spend reporting gives finance teams three figures they can use: total spend, total savings, and savings for every dollar spent. Beyond spend, the reporting covers supplier performance and compliance, so teams can see how vendors are delivering and where bookings fall outside policy. The dashboards are self-service, and any summary opens to the detail underneath, down to an individual record locator and the air, hotel, and car line items behind it.
Full reporting is included for every Christopherson client rather than sold as a premium tier. Teams that would rather work in their own systems can also access travel data through Andavo APIs.
Andavo also provides itinerary-based traveler visibility, showing where travelers are expected to be based on their trips rather than tracking their physical locations. Travel teams can identify travelers potentially affected by a disruption and communicate with the people who need assistance.
The reporting capabilities address the credibility concern Chevalier raised. When finance questions a figure, travel managers can examine the transactions behind it, including individual bookings and their associated air, hotel, and car charges. The ability to investigate discrepancies and explain how totals were calculated gives travel teams more confidence in the numbers they present.
Forecasting was the most frequently cited reporting gap in the BTSA survey. Reliable historical data gives travel teams a starting point for predicting future spending, but forecasting also requires an understanding of what could change. Hiring plans, upcoming projects, and supplier pricing can all affect future travel demand.
Consistent, accessible data supports that work. With historical spending and transaction-level detail available on demand, travel teams can identify booking patterns, compare supplier spending, and examine how costs have changed over time. They can also feed that information into their own forecasting models or AI tools without first spending days reconciling inconsistent records.
The quality of those inputs has a direct bearing on how useful the forecasts will be. A team that can explain its historical spending is in a better position to assess future costs and defend its assumptions when budgets come under review.
Reporting can show where a travel program needs attention. Addressing those gaps sometimes requires information from multiple sources and a closer examination of what the data reveals.
In the BTSA survey, 29% of buyers identified deficiencies in compliance and leakage data. Bookings made directly with suppliers or through other channels may be missing from a TMC's transaction records unless that information is captured elsewhere.
Comparing booking, payment, and expense data can help travel managers identify off-channel spending, investigate policy violations, and prepare for internal audits. Christopherson's consulting and data analysis teams help clients examine these gaps, understand where leakage occurs, and identify opportunities to bring more travel under the managed program.
Another 28% of buyers cited gaps in supplier performance reporting. At contract renewal, travel managers need to understand how well negotiated agreements align with actual booking patterns and whether preferred suppliers are delivering the expected value.
"When a contract comes up for renewal, the question I always ask is whether those discounts land where your travelers are actually flying that carrier," said Del Giudice. "A great discount on routes nobody travels doesn't do much for the program."
Christopherson's consulting team helps clients evaluate supplier agreements against actual travel activity, giving buyers a clearer basis for negotiations.
Global programs face an additional challenge when they work with several TMCs, each providing data in different formats. Inconsistent definitions and reporting methods can make it difficult to assess spending and program performance across regions.
Christopherson can incorporate data from other TMCs alongside its own, helping travel managers develop a more consistent view of their global travel programs.
For travel managers evaluating their TMC’s reporting, a useful starting point is to test the data they already receive. Can they trace a summary figure back to individual bookings? Do spend totals reconcile across reports? Can they access and export the information without submitting a special request?
These are questions Christopherson encourages clients to ask. Through Andavo’s reporting and data access capabilities, we help organizations get the information they need to evaluate their programs, answer questions from finance, and make more confident decisions. Clients can work within Andavo or bring the data into their own systems. The data belongs to the client either way.
Talk to Christopherson about your travel program’s reporting and data access.
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Dashboards refresh on a regular cadence and are available on demand, so you see an up-to-date picture whenever you log in.
Andavo’s savings view accounts for refunds applied to new tickets and avoided ticket fees, and a separate view tracks tickets that were canceled and reissued, so when a total shifts you can see what drove it.
Yes. Sustainability reporting is available as part of your program, with emissions by trip, mode, and vendor for the ESG reporting your organization files, and your account team can walk through what’s covered.
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