As corporate travel makes a strong comeback in 2025, companies are navigating a shifting landscape where in-person interactions remain essential for business success. From securing new deals to strengthening partnerships, travel remains a critical investment – – yet businesses must balance these needs with tighter budgets and a growing emphasis on efficiency.
In this Q&A with Roy Hefer, CFO of TravelPerk, he discusses key spending trends, the role of AI in streamlining travel and expense management, and how companies can take a strategic approach to optimizing business travel for long-term growth.
Corporate travel has made a strong comeback in 2025. What key spending trends are you seeing, and how are companies balancing travel needs with tighter budgets?
Business travel, or Travel for work, will continue to grow. This is because human interaction in real life is a key part of doing business. The vast majority of key decisions are made in person-whether it’s a new sale, partnership, acquisition, hiring, fundraising etc. But while business travel is rebounding, its nature and purpose are evolving.
Our Value of Business Travel 2024 report showed key trends in how business decision-makers choose to spend their travel budgets. The overall key trend is 62% of CEOs anticipated an increase in their company’s travel budgets last year, in line with the anticipated growth in their business.
At the same time, due to tighter budget constraints, companies are being much more thoughtful about how and where they spend their travel budgets. And increasingly, companies are looking for smarter and simpler ways to manage their travel budgets with solutions like TravelPerk. With this backdrop, we’ve seen nearly a 4x growth in revenue over the past 3 years.
AI is playing a growing role in travel and expense management. What are some of the most impactful ways companies are using AI to streamline T&E processes today?
At TravelPerk, we have many examples of how we are using AI to streamline processes. For example, we have embedded AI deep in our customer care operations to provide a better customer experience. With automation and AI, we are now serving twice the volume of queries with the same number of agents, which has driven our gross margin up to the mid-70s while improving customer satisfaction scores from 86% to 92%.
Our recent acquisition of Yokoy, a leading spend management platform, will further advance our AI capabilities. Yokoy’s core AI technology is a game-changer for finance departments, efficiently merging data and learning from company-specific patterns to automate reconciliation and prevent issues like double invoicing or VAT reconciliation in highly regulated and specific areas like Germany.
AI won’t replace our people, but it can certainly enhance our capabilities and support our goal to deliver 7* customer service. This way, our agents can focus on the more high-value or sensitive cases to continue supporting customers.”
As CFOs take on more strategic responsibilities, how do you see the role of finance leaders evolving when it comes to business travel management?
The role of the CFO has changed immensely over the past decade, from a scorekeeper focused on reporting and controls to a forward-looking trusted thought partner. World-class CFOs are much more than just Financial Officers. They are well-rounded Business Officers who are focused on driving business performance across the board. They’re deeply involved in the very core of defining the company strategy and long-term goals, translating those into short-
term goals and then measuring the progress of those goals. And if we’re not, course correct and shift resource allocation as needed.
This also applies to business travel. For me, it’s not just about managing the cost. Traveling for work is an investment. And the focus should be on the RETURN on that investment. CFOs should encourage intentional travel. Encourage your teams to have clear goals and a well-thought-through agenda, to prepare in advance with all required materials, pre-meeting coordination, etc. You can easily tell the difference between employees who are investing the time and effort to make a business trip successful vs. others who are booking the travel and then hoping to just figure out things on the fly.
With AI driving efficiency, how can companies ensure they’re not just cutting costs but also enhancing employee experience and supporting business growth?
AI isn’t about cutting costs. It’s about supporting the teams integrating the technology to automate repetitive, mundane tasks. That way, our teams can focus on serving our customers in the high-value special cases that require deep human interaction. This not only improves productivity but also boosts employee morale because they feel that their time and capacity are allocated to high-quality activities.
Our customers are from a diverse workforce, from scientists to sales managers. Now imagine an open heart surgeon who, on top of having to operate on patients, needs to complete endless administrative work so they spend less than half their time operating and the rest on admin tasks. One day, all of those are taken care of, and they are now spending the majority of their time just operating on patients — not only does their productivity go up, but also their morale and sense of fulfillment.
Looking ahead, what’s your advice for CFOs trying to future-proof their travel and expense strategies in an increasingly data-driven and AI-powered environment?
Invest in a modern AI-powered system where travel and expenses are fully integrated. CFOs are analyzing data closely to find areas to reduce spending. Integrated reports that monitor both travel and expenses are key in supporting CFOs during this hard economic period. Make sure your data is clean and the pipes are well connected so that you can generate real, actionable insights that will drive business performance.
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