According to SAP Concur data, business travel costs continued to rise in the first half of 2026, with airfare up over 8%, hotel rates up nearly 6%, car rental costs up about 5%, and fuel-related expenses up 22% on average. Despite higher costs, companies largely maintained travel activity, but car rental bookings declined 4%, rail bookings increased 4%, and premium cabin bookings increased 9%.
SAP Concur President Charlie Sultan writes that rising business travel demand, increasing costs, and NDC adoption are shifting power from TMCs and customers to suppliers. Citing GBTA, 59% of travel managers expect more business trips in 2024, and 67% expect higher travel spend.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that according to Aberdeen Group, SMBs spend an average of $35.02 to process one expense report. Manual expense reports involve employees sorting receipts, entering data, making copies, following up on missing documentation, and obtaining approvals, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Finance teams also review and reconcile. The article provides a formula: annual hours spent on expense reports multiplied by average hourly rate divided by number of expense reports per year equals cost per report. It recommends automated cloud solutions like Concur Expense, which allows mobile receipt capture, reduces human error, provides near real-time visibility, and scale…