Travel and Spend Platform Engine Purchases Options Travel, a TMC

Acquired company will continue to operate independently

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August 3, 2026

An image promoting the "Engine" platform, set against a breathtaking coastal view. The background features a winding road along cliffs with the ocean stretching out to the right. On the left, a white icon resembling a stylized flag or layered sails is positioned above the word "Engine" in bold white text. Below are brightly colored icons with text for different stages of travel: "Book" (red with a plane icon), "Travel" (blue with a departure icon), "Work" (yellow with a gear icon), and "Save" (teal with a document icon), emphasizing the platform's comprehensive travel planning features.

Engine, a travel and spend management platform, announced its acquisition of Options Travel, a full-service TMC. Options Travel will keep operating independently, will serve its clients under its own name and will continue to be led by its current leadership team. All Options Travel employees will join Engine post-acquisition.

According to the announcement, Engine and Options Travel started working together nine months ago. The closer Engine got to Options Travel’s day-to-day operations, the clearer it became how much TMC agents were held back by outdated booking and management tools. Engine believed solving that meant getting closer to the problem, not fixing it from a distance.

The result, said the announcement, was Engine developing a new AI-native Online Booking Tool (OBT) that includes booking, payments, reporting, customer management and duty of care for TMCs across the industry. A single dashboard gives agents one view across every client. Consolidated flows cut booking times to as little as 2.5 minutes, against an industry average of nearly 15 minutes, according to a Forrester study.

Engine, said the announcement, personalizes search to each client’s rates, preferences and policies, and flags what needs attention across an agent’s whole book of business without manual review, the kind of automated disruption handling that 89% of travel buyers say they want, according to GBTA.

“Engine is on a mission to power the future of travel, and TMCs are the relationship experts at the center of the industry,” said Elia Wallen, CEO of Engine. He added: “The technology behind them hasn’t kept up. Working with Options Travel showed us exactly where it falls short. TMCs deserve modern technology behind them, and that’s what we’re here to bring.”

Brett Buynack, general manager of Options Travel, said, “We’ve spent 30 years earning our clients’ trust while the tools available to us lagged behind.” Joining Engine, he said, “lets us help build what our industry has been waiting for: real technology for every TMC that’s been underserved by legacy software.”