The news: Three-fourths of business travelers view travel booking apps, mobile wallets, and travel alerts as expectations—not bonuses—for traveling, per an American Express survey.

• 87% of travelers find that having everything in one place on their phone makes them feel in control and stress-free while traveling.
• 65% of decision-makers say they plan to increase investment in mobile and contactless travel tools over the next year.

Zooming in: Despite the rise of tools like Zoom, business leaders are finding that in-person events have a higher return on investment. More than 80% of travelers say that they are more likely to win new business after bringing a client or prospect to a major event than through other business development activities.

However, the current process of booking business travel is perceived as wasteful.

• 75% of travel decision-makers agree that relying on multiple tools to book, pay, and manage expenses is inefficient.
• And almost half (49%) of all travelers burn at least an hour on manual tasks per trip.

Implications for issuers: Issuers have an opportunity to solve pain points for their commercial cardholders by simplifying the travel booking process.

Current travelers view mobile app solutions as table stakes. Pushing deeper into AI travel solutions meets business audiences where they’re already spending more of their time with a trusted tool.

• Nearly twice as many business travelers have adopted AI travel tools for personal use compared with the previous year (32% vs 18%).
• And 80% of business travelers say that they would be comfortable letting AI agents manage their entire travel and expense reporting process.

Prioritizing integration into agentic platforms with strong governance, transparency, data controls, and risk management can help keep business travelers confident that their data is well protected while saving time, money, and resources through agent-initiated booking.

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