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IN BRIEF
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Driven by consolidated data from Concur Expense, business travel experienced a net recovery in 2024, with a 13% increase in transactions and overall stable average costs per transaction. An informed travel management – rooted in data, compliance, and traveler experience – appears as a catalyst for this recovery of travel-related expenses: surge in air ticket purchases, growth in accommodation and ground transport, rising popularity of trains and rideshare, all within a framework of travel policies often stricter and enhanced cost control.
Analyses from SAP Concur show that 2024 was particularly dynamic for business travel expenses. Volumes are increasing, driven by air travel and a more significant recovery internationally than domestically. This trend illustrates a marked return to the field for employees after disrupted cycles, with a control over unit costs that reassures financial management.
At the heart of this equation, data-driven management – from booking to expense report – allows for fine-tuned arbitration between economic performance, service quality, and compliance. The Concur Expense platform provides timely visibility to adjust travel policies, negotiate with suppliers, and secure the compliance of expenses, including in mobility.
Numbers That Validate the Recovery
In 2024, travel transactions processed through Concur Expense increased by 13%. On the air travel side, bookings are intensifying, with a favorable gap for international (+6% of volume) compared to domestic (+3%). This air travel traction is accompanied by double-digit growth in other categories: accommodation (+17%), ground transport (+16%), meals (+13%). Alternative mobilities also stand out: car rental (+10%), train (+14%), and rideshare (+16%).
The teams at SAP Concur emphasize that this is a “healthy” recovery: more travel, more purchases per employee, but average costs per transaction are not skyrocketing. A strong signal for companies that are mindful of their budget efficiencies while supporting commercial recovery.
Tighter Policies, Smarter Management
Paradoxically, this growth occurs in a context where internal policies have tightened. One in three travelers perceives efforts by their company to reduce travel expenses. The key to this paradox lies in a better purchasing discipline (preferred suppliers, negotiated rates), optimized travel policies, and a gradual regulation of rates in the market.
The need for compliance remains central: between 15% and 20% of expense reports still contain irregularities (errors, duplicates, missing receipts, excess spending). Hence the requirement for a “precise, simple, and compliant” process, to echo the spirit of SAP Concur’s recommendations: companies that better control their expenses perform better, innovate faster, and maintain stronger customer relationships.
From Roadmap to Traveler Experience: The Levers of Informed Management
The winning approach combines a clear framework (budgets, thresholds, suppliers) with fine support for traveling teams. Smart pre-approvals, dynamic ceilings, traveler preferences, and mobile tools facilitate trade-offs between cost, quality, and productivity. This coherence also fosters the emergence of practices such as bleisure, useful for extending a business trip with a short personal stay, without undermining expense policies.
Multimodality and Sustainability as Control Accelerators
The growth of trains (+14%) confirms a shift towards sustainable and predictable modes in terms of costs and schedules. The resurgent popularity of night trains illustrates this dynamic: combining rest, reducing carbon footprint, and budget control becomes a tangible lever for cost control.
In ground transport, the growth of rideshare (+16%) and car rental (+10%) calls for finer management: integrating receipts into Concur Expense, hourly and categorical ceilings, guiding on vehicle class selections, as well as geographic restrictions to avoid spending drift.
Optimizing Hospitality and Dining
With a 17% increase in accommodation and 13% in meals, there are many optimization opportunities: negotiated rate strategies, breakfast included policies, thresholds by city, exclusion periods, or virtual cards with dynamic ceilings. On the compliance side, the digitization of receipts and automatic categorization limit errors and accelerate reimbursements without friction.
SAP Concur Technologies Supporting Financial Performance
The SAP Concur suite aligns visibility, automation, and control. Concur Expense centralizes spending, detects inconsistencies, and documents decisions; mobile receipt capture, OCR, and analytics reduce turnaround times and improve traceability. Preventive controls – policy rules, real-time alerts, approval circuits – strengthen compliance without burdening the user experience.
From Reporting to Decision-Making
Granular dashboards highlight cost drift by category, market, or team, quantify the gains from preferred suppliers, and measure the booking rate in approved channels. Companies can thus renegotiate their agreements, refine their travel policies, and evolve their mobility plans. In a rapidly changing travel-tech ecosystem – see the IPO of Navan – the ability to rely on data becomes a competitive advantage.
Reducing Irregularities, Securing Compliance
Facing the 15–20% of irregularities reported, the automation of controls (duplicates, excess spending, missing documents), intelligent sampling, and escalation workflows enable faster and more accurate processing. Ongoing training for travelers and approvers, combined with clear policies, significantly reduces non-compliance and protects margins without hindering commercial activity.
2024 Trends Redrawing Business Travel
The return of international travel (+6% vs +3% in domestic) is accompanied by a desire for useful and inspiring experiences that can enhance team engagement. Initiatives that set travel records or promote responsible mobility permeate HR and CSR policies, without deviating from budget lines thanks to informed management.
New Employee Expectations
The demand for better-paced stays mixing tourism and work is establishing itself. Organizations respond with clear frameworks (ceilings, insurance, tax compliance), multimodal options (including night trains), and a seamless end-to-end digital experience.
International Mobility and Extended Compliance
The rise of long-term assignments and relocations – for example, to relocate to Canada – broadens the scope of travel management: visas, per diem, taxation, insurance, and harmonization of expense reports internationally. By centralizing data and approval processes, SAP Concur helps standardize practices and manage cross-border costs.
How to Structure an Informed Management Strategy
Mapping expenses and paths (pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase), defining targeted KPIs (booking rates in the channel, average cost per night, carbon emissions per trip), consolidating readable travel policies, and deploying contextualized controls are the first building blocks. Following are the thoughtful adoption of SAP Concur modules (mobile, virtual cards, advanced analytics), ongoing user training, and an improvement loop based on results.
The goal: governance that connects economy, compliance, traveler experience, and environmental impact. This is how informed travel management transforms the recovery into a sustainable trajectory for travel-related expenses.
