According to a Booking.com survey, the average spend per business trip is $1,771 for non-senior employees and $1,986 for senior decision-makers, before factoring in extras such as excess baggage fees, which can range from £15 to £80 per leg.
Multiply that across dozens of travellers, and business travel quickly becomes one of a company’s most significant manageable expenses.
For finance teams, this level of spend demands more than spreadsheets and manual approvals.
What to Look for in a Future-Ready Travel Management System
As business travel evolves, finance teams need systems that are intelligent, connected, and proactive.
The right travel management platform should leverage automation and real-time data to increase the finance team’s efficiency and visibility while improving the employee experience.
A future-ready system should help finance teams move from reacting to travel spend to predicting, optimising, and influencing it.
This means going beyond process efficiency to become a strategic partner that streamlines operations and supports cost and time savings.
- Intelligent Automation and Integrated Workflows: Modern platforms should take on the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Instead of manually comparing flight options, chasing approvals, or verifying compliance, automation should coordinate these workflows intelligently. Data should move seamlessly across departments, giving finance real-time visibility into who is travelling, where, and at what cost. The system should also integrate seamlessly with the finance system.
- Built-In Compliance and Policy Control: Finance leaders should look for systems that apply travel policies automatically from the moment a booking is requested. This ensures compliance without adding manual checks, reducing administrative friction and keeping the process fast, accurate, and consistent.
- Data-Driven Insight: A future-ready system should not only track spend but also use historical patterns and live data to forecast future costs. This helps finance leaders allocate resources strategically, negotiate more favourable vendor rates, and make data-driven decisions rather than relying on assumptions.
The Tangible ROI of Automated Travel Management
What do organisations gain by embracing automation in travel management?
The answer is simple: lower costs, greater efficiency, and a team free to focus on strategy instead of admin.
When bookings, approvals, and expense reporting are automated, out-of-policy spend drops, duplicate claims are eliminated, and finance gains the visibility and time needed to identify better rates and negotiate stronger vendor agreements.
The benefits extend far beyond that. Automation reduces manual work, shortens approval cycles, speeds up month-end closes, and improves employee satisfaction by removing the frustration of delayed reimbursements.
With automation, finance can shift its attention from chasing receipts to achieving outcomes such as accurate budgets, optimised costs, and effective use of resources.
Ultimately, automation delivers both financial and strategic ROI. It cuts costs and time today while building a more agile finance function for tomorrow—one that drives smarter travel decisions and stronger business performance.
Conclusion
The evolution of business travel management is already well underway. With UniFi’s Travel Booking Automation app, these benefits are no longer theoretical.
Travel management and employee expenses are connected in one intelligent platform, giving finance real-time clarity and confidence at every stage of the process. See it for yourself.