When GBTA and ASTA studied more than 3,200 US companies, they found that every 1% increase in managed travel spend was associated with a 0.20% rise in revenue. Companies that enforced a travel policy earned 17% to 30% more revenue on average than companies that enforced none, and the biggest gains went to the lightest-touch programs, not the strictest. GBTA’s companion study of the UK market points the same way: it estimates that bringing business travel investment up to its optimal level would return £13.80 in net operating margin for every £1 invested.
That is a strong case for treating travel as an investment, and the investment keeps growing: GBTA forecasts that global business travel spend will reach a record $1.71 trillion in 2026. Yet when organizations choose or review the travel management company (TMC) that runs that investment, the conversation still tends to settle on the most visible numbers: the transaction fee, the response time, the service level agreement.
Why the visible numbers mislead
Those numbers matter. Every trip booked, changed and supported, a consultant who answers quickly, service levels met month after month: no program works without them. But they are table stakes. Every credible provider has to deliver them to stay in the room, which is exactly why they make a poor way to tell providers apart.
Like an iceberg, most of what a TMC does sits below the waterline. It doesn’t appear on a fee schedule or a monthly service report, and it rarely earns a line in an RFP scorecard. It is also where most of a program’s value is made or lost.
What sits below the waterline
Look past the booking and a good TMC is doing several jobs that your team would otherwise have to pick up, or that would quietly go undone.
- Recovering unused tickets. Every canceled trip leaves a credit with an airline, and credits expire. One North American manufacturer we work with had 861 unused tickets exchanged, voided, refunded or reassigned in six months. The cost avoided and fees recovered came to roughly 17 times the service fees it paid over the same period.
- Managing suppliers. Negotiating airline and hotel programs, then making sure travelers actually book the rates you negotiated.
- Handling disruption. Rerouting travelers when a flight cancels at midnight, in another time zone, before they reach the airport.
- Duty of care. Knowing where your people are, and reaching them fast when something goes wrong.
- Data you can act on. Turning booking data into a clear view of spend, traveler behavior and where the next saving sits.
- Designing the program. Policy, business planning and regular reviews that tie travel to what the business is trying to achieve. The GBTA and ASTA authors warn that overly rigid enforcement can limit returns, which makes policy design a value lever, not an admin task.
“Most clients only see this work when something goes wrong: a canceled flight at midnight, a credit about to expire. Our job is to catch it before they ever have to notice.”
Tammy Krings, Founder and CEO, ATG
None of this shows up in a fee comparison. All of it shows up in total cost, in traveler wellbeing and in what finance can report at the end of the year.
The replacement-cost test
A better question than what your TMC costs is what it would cost to rebuild what it does. For each function below the waterline, ask three things:
- Who would do this if our TMC didn’t?
- What would it cost us in people, systems and time?
- What would we lose in the gap, whether that’s expired credits, rates that never get booked or a traveler left without support?
For a CFO, the answers turn a fee negotiation into a value conversation. For a travel manager, they provide the evidence to take upward when the program’s budget comes under pressure.
What this means for your next review
Run the replacement-cost test before your next renewal or RFP. Ask your current TMC to put numbers below the waterline from your own program: unused ticket value recovered, negotiated rates actually booked, and a record of every time it went beyond the contract, such as a waived change fee or hotel cancellation penalty, with what each one saved you. Not every TMC tracks that last one, which is exactly why it’s worth asking for. Ask bidders to show how they deliver the same things, with results from comparable programs and an estimate of what they could recover from the open credits sitting in your program today. A provider that can show you those numbers is showing you what you are paying for. A provider that can only show you the fee is showing you the tip.