Corporate T&E has an identity crisis. This annual trends report proves it

Corporate travel and expense management may have reached the point where it needs to lie down on a couch and talk about its split personality.

On one hand, T&E has never been more sophisticated. Thanks to AI, modern solutions can help personalize booking options, rebook disrupted flights, flag suspicious expenses, and help finance teams anticipate spending before it happens.

At the same time, some companies are trapped in another era. Many employees are still filling out time-consuming expense reports. Managers are still manually approving routine transactions. And spreadsheets remain stubbornly embedded in the process.

It’s as though T&E is living in two different realities at once.

That’s the central finding of The State of Corporate Travel and Expense 2027, the eighth annual report from Navan and Skift, commissioned by Navan and based on a survey of more than 1,750 business travelers and travel and finance managers from across the U.S. and Europe.

The research identifies eight symptoms of T&E’s identity crisis — and four practical steps organizations can take to address them.

Here are some of the key takeaways.

Everybody loves business travel. The logistics? Not so much.

Let’s start with some good news. Travelers and managers agree that business travel matters. In fact, 87% of travelers and 89% of managers said they consider business travel essential or necessary. They’re similarly aligned on the effectiveness of meeting in person.

But look beyond the trip itself and the identity crisis begins to emerge.

While 83% of business travelers said they felt positive about taking work trips, they’re less enamored with travel logistics. In fact, positive sentiment drops a full 10 percentage points when asked about tasks like bookings, changes, expenses, and support. And some managers underestimate the extent of that frustration.

The disconnect gets even more interesting when you dig into what each group worries about most. Around one particularly painful aspect of business travel, there’s a yawning gap of 27 percentage points.

Find out what it is: Get the full report.

The future of expense management has arrived — but only for some

Question: If AI can detect fraud, analyze spending patterns, and make proactive recommendations, why does so much expense management still require human intervention?

According to the report, many companies are operating in a kind of middle ground. Expense automation is on the rise, but 45% of managers say they still sometimes manually review, approve, and reconcile expenses.

And the burden isn’t limited to finance teams. For travelers, expense reports are actually becoming more time-consuming: Those spending at least one hour to file an expense report jumped 10 percentage points over the past year.

The report explores just how far apart the automated and manual experiences have become — and how the difference correlates to traveler happiness.

AI can handle the hard stuff. Why are we still doing the easy stuff ourselves?

This division is clearest when comparing advanced automation capabilities with traditional workflows. On one hand, almost 40% of travelers now have access to AI that can proactively perform tasks like rebooking flights during disruptions. On the other hand, 29% of managers say that every business trip still requires a manager’s manual approval.

In other words, T&E solutions are automating increasingly complex tasks while leaving some of the predictable, repetitive work to humans. And that raises another finding: Even as AI becomes more capable, travelers still sometimes rely on actual people. During trip disruptions, for example, almost half of the respondents say they call a human agent. So the answer isn’t simply more automation — it’s figuring out the right balance between technology and human expertise.

Eight symptoms. One identity crisis.

Beyond these findings, the report explores why travelers continue to book outside their company’s approved corporate platforms, why sophisticated financial intelligence still coexists with spreadsheets, and why companies that want better T&E are increasingly anxious about making a change.

More importantly, it offers actionable steps travel and finance leaders can take to start closing the gaps.

Download The State of Corporate Travel and Expense 2027 to explore all eight symptoms of the identity crisis, the research behind them, and what organizations can do to bring T&E’s split personality closer together.

There’s more data to come

The report is only the beginning of what we’ve learned from this year's research.

Over the coming months, we’ll be slicing and dicing responses from various cohorts and demographics, and sharing more insights into how travelers and T&E leaders are navigating today’s increasingly complicated landscape. Stay tuned.