The three-day BTE 2026 T&E Summit in Cape Coral, FL, felt palpably different from the typical conference slate of polished one-way presentations. Under the warm Florida sun, travel buyers and suppliers quickly leaned into harder back-and-forth conversations about what is, and what is not, working in corporate travel. By the closing session, one theme emerged above all else: Trust and transparency are the foundation of effective travel programs.
Buyers, long frustrated by opaque pricing and fragmented services, voiced their concerns about what is at stake when clarity is missing. Suppliers, in turn, expressed insights on how to demonstrate measurable value and rebuild confidence. Both sides explored actionable ways to increase transparency, especially inside hot topic areas such as AI, pricing and strategic alignment.
“Travel buyers need clear visibility into revenue streams, benchmarking data, and service costs so they understand what drives price. At the same time, suppliers and TMCs need honest conversations about realistic volume, adoption targets, and service expectations,” notes Mary Ellen Hess, EVP of business development North America, CTM. “An open partnership, grounded in real data and shared accountability is what turns buyer-supplier relationships into mutually beneficial partnerships.”
It’s no secret that managed travel works well when everything connects across the entire ecosystem (buyers, suppliers, the C-suite, TMCs, technology, stakeholders). The idea of recalibrating buyer-supplier relationships through this holistic lens was evident.
Beyond Pricing Transparency
For many travel buyers, understanding the true cost of corporate travel remains difficult, especially with ‘hidden’ factors such as airline commissions, fragmented content, dynamic discounts, and TMC-bundled incentives. These serve to further complicate a system in which it’s hard to recognize whether a negotiated rate truly benefits the organization or simply inflates supplier margins.
Pricing opacity is frustrating in more ways than one, especially when it has operational consequences. “Suppliers promise a suite of services, preferred rates, or value-adds, but too often the experience doesn’t match the promise,” reflects Amy Hunke, global travel and meetings manager with AMETEK. “Our travelers aren’t motivated by loyalty programs. They want a better travel experience – minimizing flight delays or cancellations, or offering hotel vouchers if there are disruptions. They want real support when things go wrong. If a TMC can’t deliver that consistently, no amount of discount or rebate matters. It’s about reliability, responsiveness and trust.”
This sentiment underscores a broader industry problem: Discounts alone cannot secure loyalty. “As a travel buyer, I’m interested in both discounts and alternative models, such as rebates, revenue sharing, and/or benefits including early boarding privileges, preferred seating options, lounge access and reserved overhead space,” echoes Jennifer Steinke, director of travel, meetings and fleet at Moderna.
While some buyers are evaluating percentage reductions alongside traveler benefits, other organizations are rethinking structure altogether, especially when it comes to legacy fee transactions. Elizabeth Dressel, travel manager at the University of Wisconsin System, describes restructuring her institution’s specialty athletic travel program around a flat service fee that includes designated agents, booking tools, and after-hours support.
“For our athletic departments, removing visible fees reduced friction immediately,” Dressel explains. “For other programs, a transactional model still makes sense to allocate costs appropriately. The key was having open conversations internally and with our TMC partners about what structure truly serves each group. Once employees stopped seeing fees attached to every touchpoint, adoption improved.”
Reducing friction is the end game. But how do buyers get there? By coming to the negotiating table well-prepared, early on, and with intention. “You can get some transparency around commissions and pricing when you’re negotiating with a TMC – but only if you show up with your homework done and are ready to ask the difficult questions,” explains David Smith, travel, immigration and relocation manager Americas at Amdocs. “That means compiling data on travel volume, program details, adoption rates, and service expectations. It’s not the negotiation itself that’s hard; it’s having the clarity to make the conversation productive.”
Are Discounts Even Real?
Even when pricing is relatively transparent, buyers increasingly question whether negotiated discounts translate into meaningful savings. For many, reductions on airfare or hotel rates are often simply too small to affect the overall business travel experience. “Hotel discounts are difficult to prove, whether static, dynamic, or chain, but air is beyond complex, and it’s truly difficult to understand if it’s even valuable. With discounts being 5 percent or less on average for small and medium-sized companies, is that really doing anything for you? $10 off a domestic ticket?” asks Hunke.
Grappling over marginal reductions does little to improve traveler experience, too. “True transparency means shifting the conversation from ‘What is the discount?’ to ‘What is the total cost of ownership and value delivered?’” says Mike Daly, chief revenue officer at Cerebrai AI and co-founder of BizTrip AI. “That includes service, flexibility, duty of care, data visibility, and disruption support, not just base price.” Reframing the conversation in the context of “total value” broadens it. In other words, cost-savings will always be relevant to buyers, but is no longer solely sufficient.
“Discounts and commissions do exist, but whether they deliver real value depends on how well they align with an organization’s specific travel patterns,” adds Mindee Graver, travel manager at Utah Valley University. “A negotiated discount is only meaningful if your travelers actually fly those routes or stay at those properties. What matters most is ongoing data sharing and honest conversations with suppliers – not just about price, but about consistency, service, and long-term partnership. When suppliers approach these relationships with transparency, the pricing becomes real and measurable rather than theoretical.”
For suppliers, the conversation is equally sensitive, with the point of breakdown often occurring not because suppliers earn margins, but because those margins remain unclear. “Buyers don’t necessarily object to suppliers making money. What erodes trust is not knowing how the economics actually work,” says Caitlin Gomez, head of growth at AMGiNE AI. “If a program is built on ‘hidden economics,’ it will eventually fracture. A potential model for the future could be partnership-based in which suppliers show how pricing is constructed, TMCs explain how they’re compensated, and buyers evaluate value delivered, not just line-item price. The industry doesn’t need lower pricing as much as it needs clearer pricing.”
AI: What’s Hype & What’s Not
Across the Summit, pricing transparency wasn’t the only issue top of mind – so was AI, especially distinguishing meaningful, operationally valuable AI from the flashy marketing hype. According to the McKinsey & Company’s 2024 State of AI Report, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of organizations report using AI in at least one business function, and about one-third are using generative AI regularly in at least one function.
The Summit clearly brought out a healthy skepticism. ”AI isn’t impressive because it sounds futuristic. It’s impressive when it removes friction,” states Gomez. “Right now, there’s an AI label on everything. That doesn’t make it transformative. The filter I recommend is simple: Does it eliminate manual work? Does it improve decision quality? Does it increase speed without sacrificing compliance? Can you measure the impact? If the answer isn’t measurable, it’s probably marketing.”
This framework mirrors the pricing conversation: The measurable impact from utilizing AI is more important than fuzzy, feel-good optics. However, many organizations remain in the early validation stages of testing company-specific pilot programs.
“I’ve found that roughly 70 percent of travel programs are exploring AI, but fewer than 25 percent have meaningfully embedded it into core workflows,” Gomez continues. “AI adoption is now mainstream at the enterprise level. Travel is not early anymore; it’s in the mid-adoption phase. Very few corporate travel buyers are automating complex workflows like group air, multi-source intake parsing, or full agent augmentation, according to multiple sources. When it comes to the supplier side, true middleware AI orchestration is still rare, but most of business travel today sits largely in the Pilot or Early Embedded stage.”
Looking ahead, AI will increasingly serve as a decision-support partner – helping travel and meetings leaders interpret complex data, model different scenarios, and make more informed strategic choices. “The goal isn’t to replace human expertise, but to augment it. The planners who lean into AI thoughtfully will spend less time chasing information and more time driving impact,” says Wendy Palmer, event and partner marketing manager at Alcatraz.
Getting from Point A to B often may require a cultural shift. This maturation process naturally requires much trial and error, but the end game is to embed solutions into workflows that quietly make programs simply run better. According to Daly, “The industry is slowly evolving from generative novelty to ‘agentic utility.’ If AI cannot demonstrate a clear before-and-after improvement, it is still experimental. Trust in AI comes from transparency of inputs and outcomes. Buyers want to know what data is being used, how recommendations are generated, whether results are auditable, and what risks or biases exist.”
From Transactional to Strategic
For years, corporate travel has been treated primarily as a cost center, with buyers focused on squeezing out savings on individual trips. This “nickel-and-dime” approach may reduce ticket costs temporarily, but it often undermines compliance and trust. “Moving beyond transactional thinking requires treating travel as a managed investment, not a series of individual bookings,” adds Kerin McKinnon, VP of business development North America at CTM. “With this approach, travel naturally earns its place as a strategic business function rather than a cost to control.”
The bigger picture involves demonstrating how success can be measured beyond “cost-per-trip,” especially with an eye to duty of care. This will require travel managers and executive leadership to actively pursue a deeper alignment between business travel and business objectives. “Using a dire emergency such as the Israeli or Ukrainian bombings can be instrumental,” says Hunke. “If your travelers are not in policy, you can’t see them. You can’t help them. They are stuck. In my experience, we had five people there, and could only find four because they were in policy. Those four were airlifted out ASAP, while the fifth had to wait far longer. Relating recommendations to real-world examples speaks volumes.”
Organizations are increasingly recognizing that travel exists to enable revenue by building relationships, not merely to minimize spend. “Are we able to rewire TMC contracts to look at (and bill at) the big picture rather than the nickel and dime we’ve gotten used to?” posits Rosemary Maloney, senior director of corporate travel at the Freeman Company and president of the Global Business Travel Association. “I think it’s possible, but there needs to be some enterprising companies that are willing to take the chance.”
Like all things that seed and bloom, there will be growing pains. What emerged from the conversations at the Summit was a picture of an industry that is entering a maturity phase. Corporate travel does not break down because of price alone, but because of trust. “Trust is not a soft concept in corporate travel. It is the operating system that determines whether programs function or fragment,” Daly maintains.
“Buyers were asking hard questions. Suppliers were leaning in instead of deflecting,” Gomez notes. “That’s progress.”
If you want to continue the conversation, make plans now for the 2027 BTE Summit, which returns next year, January 14-16, in Cape Coral, FL.
