The Hidden Cost of Dirty Data: Why Travel Management Needs Data Accuracy Now

The quality of that data has become just as important as its volume. For travel management companies (TMCs), corporate travel managers, and finance teams alike, decisions made on inaccurate data can lead to costly missteps, inefficiencies, and lost opportunities. That’s why data accuracy isn’t just a technical concern—it’s a strategic imperative.

Clean, consistent, and trustworthy data is foundational to better business outcomes. Whether it’s reconciling travel spend, analyzing supplier performance, or refining traveler behavior policies, accurate data makes the difference between reactive and proactive decision-making.

The Cost of Inaccuracy

While the financial impact of bad data is often hidden, it’s very real. According to industry research, poor data quality costs organizations an average of 15–20% of their revenue. In the travel sector, where margins are tight and client expectations are high, this can be particularly damaging.

Imagine negotiating supplier contracts with inaccurate volume data, or launching a new traveler policy based on flawed compliance figures. These missteps ripple throughout the organization, affecting operations, partnerships, and even employee satisfaction.

Moreover, as artificial intelligence and predictive analytics become more integrated into travel technology, the importance of data accuracy grows. AI is only as smart as the data it consumes. Feeding machine learning models with messy or incomplete data results in inaccurate forecasts and faulty automation.

Why Data Accuracy Matters in Travel Management

The corporate travel landscape is complex, with multiple systems, suppliers, and stakeholders involved at every step of the journey. Data flows in from booking tools, global distribution systems (GDS), expense platforms, and virtual payment providers. With so many moving parts, discrepancies and duplications can easily creep in.

For example:

• A traveler’s name, a hotel’s name or address, a city’s name or even vendor names might be spelled differently across platforms.

• Flight segments may be missing or miscategorized.

• Payment records might not align with booking data.

These inconsistencies add up quickly. Inaccurate data can distort reporting, complicate reconciliation, and lead to flawed insights. For finance teams, this means trouble tracking spend. For travel managers, it can skew compliance metrics or supplier negotiations. For TMCs, it impacts their ability to deliver value-added services and actionable intelligence to their clients.

Building a Foundation for Trustworthy Data

At Grasp Technologies, we’ve built our solutions around the belief that reliable data drives confident decisions. Our platforms are designed to clean, normalize, and enrich data at every stage, so our clients can trust the insights they’re using to guide their strategy.

Here’s how we help clients manage data accuracy:

1. Automated Data Normalization

Different suppliers and systems format data in different ways. Grasp’s tools standardize this information to ensure consistency across all reports and dashboards. This includes standardizing city names, segment types, payment codes, and more—automatically.

2. Validation and Error Checking

Grasp’s platforms actively scan for missing fields, duplicate records, and common formatting errors. Clients are alerted when something seems off, so they can correct issues before they lead to larger problems downstream.

3. Integrated Data from Multiple Sources

We bring together data from various systems—GDS, back-office, virtual payment platforms, and more—into one centralized environment. This reduces manual work and ensures a more complete, accurate picture of the travel program.

4. Dashboards and Intelligent Filters

With graspANALYTICS, users can build tailored dashboards that surface only the most relevant data, reducing noise and improving focus. Intelligent filters make it easy to drill down by traveler type, vendor, region, or cost center—ensuring stakeholders see exactly what they need, when they need it, based on accurate, real-time information.

Turning Accurate Data Into Action

When data is accurate, businesses gain the confidence to act. That might mean adjusting policy thresholds, reallocating budgets, negotiating supplier deals, or identifying hidden savings opportunities.

Let’s take virtual payments as an example. With clean data from a platform like graspPAY, finance and travel teams can accurately reconcile transactions, track hotel stays, and improve payment security. It’s not just about recording spend—it’s about understanding it and using that insight to make better choices.

The Walt Disney Company leveraged graspPAY to automate and streamline hotel bookings for non-employees and employees without corporate cards. By integrating directly with booking tools and the GDS, graspPAY enabled Disney to issue virtual cards within existing workflows—reducing reconciliation errors by 90% and significantly boosting efficiency. The solution has helped eliminate fraud risk, ensure policy compliance, and deliver potential cost savings of up to $2.8 million annually.

Empowering the Future with Accurate Data

As travel continues to evolve—embracing sustainability, remote work, and new payment methods—the demand for accurate, timely data will only increase. TMCs and travel managers who invest in data quality now will be better positioned to adapt to changing expectations and deliver stronger results.

At Grasp Technologies, we’re proud to help clients build that foundation. From ensuring every transaction is correctly categorized to enabling predictive analytics, we make it possible to move from data chaos to clarity.

Because better data means better decisions—and better decisions drive better business outcomes.