The chief technology officer of a hotel must have the right data connections to generate revenue within a short timeframe, not a generic list of software products. Meanwhile, founders of startups or managers of corporate finance are overwhelmed with claims pertaining to artificial intelligence cloud solutions from a vast number of travel tech companies in the marketplace.
This framework allows you to see the actual organisations currently developing the required infrastructure along with specific pricing models and integration details.
The State of Travel Tech Companies
The travel software industry is constantly evolving. In most cases, you will see the same short list of names on the lists generated from the different companies in this sector. However, these lists do not provide you with information regarding the functionality of their solutions once they are deployed in your organisation.
It is impossible to successfully operate a travel-related business with assumptions on marketing claims. You need actual performance statistics.
As the industry progresses toward more sophisticated use of artificial intelligence, you are no longer merely accessing AI tools that provide destination recommendations.
You are accessing AI tools that allow agents to rebook cancelled flights, issue refunds, and update expense reports without any human involvement. As this occurs, the distribution of airline products will become more significantly disrupted. Airlines continue to expand access to these types of initiatives through direct channels along with the potential for more than 65% of indirect bookings to be processed through NDC.
The end user of the travel software industry desires an integrated approach to technology. Users wish to have access to all of their existing travel management tools (e.g. booking tool, expense card approval process) through their day-to-day productivity applications such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
If the provider cannot clearly articulate their pricing model, provide actual evidence of response times to their support requests, and have prescribed timeframes to implement their solutions, they should NOT be included in your technology stack.
Identifying the Best Travel Tech Companies for Corporate Expenses
If you operate in the finance or enterprise-level application sectors, it is imperative that you maintain absolute control over your expenses to predict how much you'll spend per trip and to build a solid connection to your accounting systems.
Don't be fooled by "custom pricing" when what you want is a standard corporate tool. Here's a look at the top companies offering tools for managing corporate travel:
1. Navan
Navan is helping to drive the development of the corporate travel management solution market by offering a combined booking, card and expense application.
Navan's AI assistant, Ava, currently answers about 8,000 support requests a day, 60% of which are resolved independently. Navan's pricing model is aggressive for customers because they are offering free business accounts for companies with up to 300 employees, and the first five users of the expense module can use it for free.
Enterprise customers have the option to choose custom pricing, and the no-cost entry-level offering provides an immediate incentive to attract mid-market companies.
2. Itilite
Itilite is competing directly against Navan for predictable, transparent fees. The company charges $10 per trip and $6 per month for each user who uses the expense software.
For travelers who may need help while at an airport, it is extremely important that companies guarantee that chat support will be provided within 30 seconds of a request, and that phone support will be provided within one minute. Itilite also operates their own travel management agency, which allows for direct control over the delivery of the support services they provide.
3. SAP Concur
SAP Concur is the corporate travel management tool of choice for large multinational organizations. In the event that your company operates entirely on SAP, then SAP Concur is the most common platform to use.
Additionally, SAP Concur recently launched the Joule AI tool and added strong integration with Microsoft Teams. Companies must be prepared for a long implementation time, as implementation and setup for SAP Concur typically requires three to six months to complete. The rapid creation of new platforms is quite uncommon.
4. TravelPerk
TravelPerk's target audience is finance teams looking for flexible options that are quick and easy to understand.
TravelPerk offers a tier called Starter that allows free usage but takes 5% of the total amount of each booking as a fee for using that tier. There is also a tier called Premium that costs $99 per month and takes 3% of the booking total.
TravelPerk's premier offering is something called FlexiTravel. This allows businesses to receive 80% of their money back when they cancel any travel booking with a 10% fee being charged upfront for this feature. This feature has changed the way in which businesses process last minute meeting cancellations.
5. Spotnana
Spotnana is a developing platform that is focused on API first. Spotnana supports the hidden systems of many other companies that are already established.
For instance, Spotnana manages the backend of the travel technology used by Brex. Spotnana's artificial intelligence consistently manages challenging tasks, such as tracking unused travel tickets and managing split payments.
6. BCD Travel
BCD Travel is a substantial travel management company, generating $22.9 billion per year. BCD Travel should be on this list because of its commitment to the financial side of travel management.
Recently, BCD introduced a rating system for companies that accept virtual card payments. Virtual card payments have long been a major problem for travel managers and their employees, whose employees have experienced trouble at hotel front desks when their employees present them with virtual payment numbers.
Hotel Property Management Systems & Operational Technology
The world of hotel operational technology has become reliant on constant uptime; therefore, the property management system is now the center of communication (with a click to call) for guest direct communications and rapid check-in and complex earnings calculations.
Hotel servers were once stored in the back closet; now, they are hosted on the internet.
1. Mews
As of March 2, 2020, Mews has now powered more than 15,000 hotels and continues to increase their eyes on growth and developing additional products that will help hotels maximize their revenue.
Research has found that hotel companies see an increase of approximately 13.7 per cent in total revenue generated by square meters after nine months of the hotel being opened. Hotel companies also operate automated check-in systems throughout Europe, and expect to release an integrated artificial intelligence (AI) messaging tool for guests.
2. Cloudbeds
Built for scalability, Cloudbeds runs hotel operations for close to 20,000 properties, providing a one-stop shop for management of the largest online booking agency in the world with over $12 billion in annual bookings.
What makes Cloudbeds unique is its AI revenue management system. This has a predicted forecasting accuracy of 90% for demand forecasting over a 90-day period, as well as an in-house application called Ask Signals to help employees at hotels with day-to-day operations and processes.
3. Apaleo
Apaleo is an API-first platform. For hotels with a highly skilled internal IT department, this would be the preferred solution.
The speed of deployment is exceptional; the citizenM hotel chain has utilised Apaleo to migrate its 7,500 rooms from their old system to Apaleo's platform in a record eight weeks. Additionally, approximately 20 of the world's largest hotel brands are currently running AI agents through Apaleo's platform.
4. Oracle Opera Cloud
Oracle is the largest player in the hospitality space, with the largest portfolio of over 73,000 hotel properties worldwide and over 5.2 million guest rooms.
The primary source of Oracle's competition is the Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP), which connects over 3,000 different third-party vendors to hotel chains through an online marketplace. For any hotel chain looking to operate on an international level, Oracle provides the foundation for all operable departments.
5. Shiji Group
Shiji Group is the provider of Daylight PMS and Infrasys POS systems. Shiji focuses on providing a complete solution for large complex resorts that require all food and beverage and guest room data to flow together seamlessly.
Global Distribution Systems and Airline Retailing
1. Amadeus
Amadeus has a massive amount of data available to them. 3 billion flight search inquiries are processed by Amadeus every day! Around 2 billion customers fly on airlines that Amadeus has access to each year.
Amadeus has recently created a retail solution for airlines called Nevio which has been adopted by a number of previously established, major international airlines including British Airways, Air France, and KLM. In fact, Amadeus estimates that Nevio is currently processing approximately 25 percent of all passengers that move through Amadeus systems. Amadeus also has a payments arm called Outpayce set up to assist their clients in getting their funds more quickly and efficiently.
2. Sabre
Sabre is the second largest global distribution system, with a very large volume of search requests processed every day. Sabre has recently migrated 99 percent of their computing infrastructure to Google Cloud.
Sabre is taking a very aggressive approach to the new retail model with their latest offering called Mosaic and is pushing agentic APIs which are designed to make it simple for developers to create automated booking flows for Sabre products. As of the beginning of 2025, Sabre had 38 of their NDC integrations working successfully in live production.
3. Travelport
Travelport rounds out the top three GDS providers. Travelport has created a new cloud-native version of their core platform called TripServices, and is also working with Anthropic to integrate deep language models into flight search and flight pricing.
Financial Infrastructure and White-Label APIs
Before a new startup OTA can make their first sale, they must first access inventory and have a mechanism in place to facilitate global monetary transactions. Undoubtedly, these businesses are the hidden backbone of the travel tech companies ecosystem.
1. Nium
If you book a hotel in Spain while working at a company in Japan, the money will need to be transferred internationally and immediately (through an application). Nium does this for you.
They offer payments in all 190 countries and over 100 currencies and provide users with the ability to use a card to send money around the globe. They also work with complicated payment processing for the airline industry. All of their products allow travel companies to focus on enhancing user experiences by handling complex financial matters.
2. Mindtrip
Mindtrip provides conversational event planning solutions.
They do not simply provide advisory services; however, they have partnered with Sabre and PayPal to establish a flow process that enables users to ask questions, receive flight recommendations, and pay for the option using the chat window. This allows artificial intelligence to transition from being a mere search tool to becoming a powerful sales vehicle.
3. Hopper
While Hopper initially focused on providing flight options to consumers, they have now evolved to sell their industry-leading predictive pricing engines to other entities.
Through bundling various financial technology products into well-designed API solutions, Hopper enables other travel agents to offer their clients features such as price freeze guarantees and cancellation for any reason.
4. Duffel & RateHawk
Both Duffel and RateHawk consider themselves to be pure API suppliers.
Therefore, if you are launching your own booking application as a startup, you are better off utilizing a single solution rather than having to negotiate with all 500 airlines individually. Through utilizing Duffel's platform, you will gain access to flight data and enable users to book instantly through their site. RateHawk will enable users to access a huge inventory of hotel rooms worldwide.
Agency Portal and Online Booking Platforms
While there are many technology companies developing only software, there are also many travel tech companies creating massive platforms connecting human consultants and consumers to travel products.
1. Fora
Fora is a great example of a modern operating system for travel consultants. Today, there are 15,000 active consultants on the Fora platform who have generated more than $3 billion in sales.
Fora's technology produces actionable insights based on real figures. For instance, a single piece of technology that allows travel advisors to create "actionable quotes" increased monthly bookings by 23%. An internal piece of technology that tracks hotel prices dropping has saved clients over $4 million.
2. Consumer Marketplaces
On the other end of the spectrum, we have consumer marketplaces such as Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Airbnb, and Trip.com, which are the foundation for distributing travel products to consumers.
In addition, GetYourGuide is a marketplace focused solely on providing unique travel experiences. GetYourGuide generates approximately $4.8 billion in gross merchandise value, proving that a company that connects local tour operators with global customers is extremely lucrative.
Final Thoughts: Choose Operations over Hype
Do not be sidetracked by marketing teams that throw around vague statements regarding the future of the travel industry. You should thoroughly investigate the following three areas when you are evaluating travel technology:
The total cost of ownership (TCO).
The service level agreements (SLA).
The projected implementation time frame.
When it comes to mid-market travel finance executives, the total cost of every employee trip will directly impact the business. For hotel technology directors, it is critical to know how long it will take to migrate a system from one provider to another - whether it be eight weeks or six months.
When evaluating travel technology solutions, look for clearly defined pricing tiers, evidence that a particular technology increases revenue by 13%, or that an AI tool handles 60% of customer service inquiries without requiring human contact.
When evaluating vendors in this space, ask directly about their virtual card acceptance rates and the exact timeline for implementing new airline distribution relationships. Build your technology stack around tools that address daily operational challenges, and avoid vendors that refuse to disclose their actual numbers.