Business travelers are increasingly turning to alternative booking channels like Airbnb, VRBO, Uber, and Lyft—whether or not those options exist within their company’s managed travel program. For travel managers, that shift presents a growing challenge: how do organizations maintain visibility, policy compliance, and duty of care when travelers book outside approved channels?
According to Matt Cameron, chief consulting officer at Christopherson, the issue is no longer theoretical.
“Fifty-one percent of employees sometimes book outside the channel,” Cameron said, citing recent industry research. “But a full 26 percent said they weren’t even aware there were corporate booking channels they should be using.”
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That growing disconnect between traveler behavior and managed travel policy has created a new category of risk for organizations trying to balance traveler flexibility with operational oversight.
Nontraditional accommodations and rideshare platforms have become standard tools for many travelers because they offer convenience, flexibility, and in some cases, lower costs. But when those bookings happen outside approved systems, organizations often lose oversight into where employees are staying, how they are traveling, and whether those bookings comply with company policy.
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“You don’t have much insight into that,” Cameron explained. “And because they’re not visible, you don’t have any kind of tracking, you don’t have any receipts that are automatically coming in, and you certainly don’t have any duty of care where you can have a sense of where those travelers are when they’re using these alternate vendors.”
The challenge is especially pronounced with unmanaged Airbnb or VRBO bookings. Unlike traditional hotel programs, many off-channel accommodation platforms were not originally built with enterprise travel management in mind. That means integrations, reporting capabilities, and safety protocols often lag behind corporate expectations.
“There’s no front desk, and there’s no one to easily call to get help,” Cameron said. “You’re working with some individual who’s listed their house for rent.”
For organizations, that creates concerns around traveler safety, emergency response, insurance exposure, and compliance monitoring.
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Paul Foster, a Christopherson strategic consultant, described the issue as a collision between two fundamentally different travel ecosystems.
On one side are traditional managed travel programs built around hotel chains, rental car providers, negotiated rates, centralized billing, and established support structures. On the other is the rapidly expanding sharing economy, where independent providers can enter the marketplace with little standardization or oversight.
“It’s still a relatively unregulated space,” Foster said. “Independents can just put their home for rent, and they can get it listed on any variety of internet sites out there and set up their own programs.”
That lack of standardization creates complications for travel managers trying to maintain consistent traveler support and policy enforcement.
“Often there’s very little safety structure around it,” Foster noted. “Organizations may not even know where travelers are staying.”
The same issue extends to rideshare services and other off-channel platforms operating globally. While Uber and Lyft dominate in the U.S., Foster pointed out that many international markets have localized options that may operate with even less corporate infrastructure.
“These could be completely unauthorized booking programs that are out there,” he said. “Something that you may not even be aware of.”
Despite the risks, both Cameron and Foster emphasized that the goal is not to eliminate nontraditional vendors entirely.
“We’re not arguing that you should move all your hotel to Airbnb and VRBO at all,” Cameron said. “It’s probably a small piece of your spend, but our main concern is that you do have oversight and that it works for you in your managed program.”
Instead, organizations need to decide how those vendors fit into policy and where guardrails should exist.
Cameron outlines three common approaches companies can take:
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“The question is how do you bring them into your program with proper authorization, tracking, and compliance so that you feel like it’s an authorized channel and you have some visibility,” Cameron said.
That insight is critical not only for spend management, but also for duty of care.
“If you’re managing your program and you don’t have oversight into part of it, you can’t manage that part,” Cameron said. “And it handicaps you as the travel manager responsible.”
One development making this easier is the growing availability of enterprise-level programs within major rideshare platforms.
“Many of these platforms have now expanded into the corporate travel space,” Foster explained. “You can set up individual agreements with them to help.”
Those corporate accounts can provide centralized billing, reporting dashboards, policy controls, and improved transparency into traveler activity.
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“One of the key things that these rideshares are known for is the concept of surge pricing,” Foster said. “You may be able to put some elements in place that if it exceeds a certain dollar amount, then you may not recommend it or you may not allow it.”
Corporate integrations also improve tracking capabilities.
“You can confirm that a traveler successfully used a rideshare and reached their destination,” Foster said. “So, it does give you a little bit better visibility, and that’s certainly a help with duty of care.”
Accommodation platforms present a more complicated challenge.
Unlike rideshare providers, many short-term rental platforms still lack the enterprise integrations travel managers need to properly support compliance and traveler safety.
“Airbnb doesn’t offer a publicly available API,” Cameron said. “But we’re constantly talking to them about it.”
VRBO presents similar limitations.
That lack of connectivity makes it difficult to automate reporting, expense capture, or traveler tracking within managed programs.
Beyond technology limitations, organizations must also consider liability, accessibility, and employee experience concerns.
“You may have a situation where it’s not necessarily standardized,” Foster said. “ADA compliance is also a big issue with these properties.”
Cameron added that group accommodations can introduce additional cultural or safety considerations.
“If you have folks traveling together to a hotel, they’re generally getting separate rooms,” he said. “But in the case of an Airbnb, you might be tempted to rent the house. So, there could be some cultural or safety issues around that you’d want to consider.”
As nontraditional bookings continue to grow, organizations are increasingly looking for ways to incorporate those reservations into existing travel workflows rather than ignoring them altogether.
One solution involves adding passive booking segments into managed travel systems so travel managers can track spend and duty of care even when bookings occur outside traditional channels.
“If you book an Airbnb or a VRBO through us, then we do that through full-service agents. They can add it as a passive segment into the record. segment into the record,” Cameron explained. “That gives you tracking for the spend, and it also gives you tracking for duty of care.”
For bookings made independently, organizations can still create manual reporting workflows.
“For Christopherson clients, the option would be to train your team to send that booking to plans@ondavo.com,” Cameron said. “That would bring the booking into your travel ecosystem, allowing insight into both spend and duty-of-care tracking.”
While those processes are not fully automated, they represent an important step toward regaining oversight in an increasingly fragmented booking environment.
As traveler preferences evolve, travel managers are facing a broader reality: unmanaged travel behavior will continue to exist whether policies acknowledge it or not.
The organizations adapting most effectively are not necessarily the ones banning nontraditional suppliers outright. Instead, they are identifying where flexibility makes sense, where risk becomes unacceptable, and how tracking can be maintained across both traditional and nontraditional channels.
“We know that travelers are already booking some of these,” Foster said. “What we really want to stress is that if you do allow these services, you should establish best practices that provide oversight and control.”
For many companies, the next step is simply understanding the true scope of off-channel activity already happening within their programs.
“The first thing you'll want to do is audit your current off-channel bookings,” Cameron advised. “Then you can evaluate these vendors and decide which one is maybe appropriate for your organization and for your corporate travel program.”
As off-channel bookings become more common, organizations need clearer ways to track, manage, and support traveler activity across every booking channel. That visibility has become essential for policy enforcement, traveler safety, spend management, and informed decision-making across the enterprise.
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