The ROI Problem in Business Travel: Why “Prove It” Is Harder Than It Sounds

Travel programs are under more pressure than ever to justify spend. If you manage a corporate travel program, whether you sit in Travel, Procurement, Finance, or you’re the budget owner for a cost center, you’ve heard the question in one form or another:

“What’s the ROI of this trip?”

The truth is: business travel ROI is not just difficult to calculate, it’s difficult to define. And most organizations unintentionally make it even harder through fragmented buying behavior, policy exceptions, and missing context.

Why ROI in Travel Is Hard to Prove

Travel ROI is rarely about a single metric. Savings alone only tell part of the story, and focusing only on negotiated rates or policy compliance often misses operational and financial gains that matter just as much.

The cleanest version of ROI is simple:

ROI = (Incremental value created – Trip cost) / Trip cost

In practice, “incremental value created” is where everything breaks.

A sales trip might contribute to a deal, but:

• Was the trip necessary to close, or just helpful?

• Did it accelerate the close by 30 days or would it have happened anyway?

• Was the revenue actually incremental, or just shifted timing?

• Was this trip one of five influences that made the outcome possible?

A client visit might protect renewal, but:

• Was churn truly avoided because of the visit?

• Or because the product improved?

• Or because the client’s leadership changed?

A site visit might reduce operational risk, but:

• What’s the value of a problem that didn’t happen?

Business travel produces compound effects: relationships, trust, speed, alignment, risk reduction. Those effects are real, but they’re not easily attributable in a spreadsheet. And the more senior the traveler, the more the “value” is embedded in intangible outcomes.

In many companies, the demand for a crisp ROI number creates a false choice: either we pretend we can measure it cleanly or we give up and measure nothing.

Neither is a great option.

The Hidden Data Problem Behind Travel ROI

Common challenges include:

• Data living in disconnected booking, payment, and expense systems

• Manual reporting that takes weeks and still lacks confidence

• Difficulty tying travel activity to real business outcomes

The hidden problem: your “travel spend” often isn’t your travel spend.

Travel managers and procurement leaders frequently get measured on:

• online booking adoption

• preferred supplier share

• average ticket or hotel rate

• policy compliance

• leakage

But those metrics assume the organization is buying travel through the channels being measured.

In reality, travel is often purchased:

• directly with airlines/hotels (points, perks, status motivations)

• through consumer OTAs

• on personal cards for reimbursement

• via event registration bundles

• via “I’ll just book it quickly” behavior during time pressure

Off-channel spend is not just a data problem, it’s an ROI problem.

Because once purchases go off-channel:

• you lose visibility into what was bought and why

• you lose context (meeting purpose, customer, expected outcome)

• you lose standardization (fare class, cancellation terms, negotiated rates)

• you lose enforceability (approval workflows, pre-trip controls)

• you lose downstream signals needed to link outcomes to travel events

Without clean, connected data, even strong programs struggle to prove their impact.

Rogue Behavior, Exceptions, and False Signals

“Rogue traveler” is a tempting label. It implies defiance. Sometimes it is.

But more often, rogue behavior is the consequence of misaligned incentives:

• Speed beats compliance.

• Personal benefit beats corporate optimization.

• Policy feels arbitrary.

• The traveler carries the friction.

Rogue travel is rarely random. It’s often rational and from the traveler’s perspective.

And if it’s rational, it’s repeatable — which means it will systematically distort your ROI analysis.

Off-channel spend also creates false signals about program performance.
That’s not just misleading, it’s dangerous.

It can lead to:

• overconfidence in program health

• misguided supplier negotiations

• incorrect assumptions about traveler behavior

• inaccurate budget forecasting

Internal exceptions compound the problem. When managers override policy, governance becomes a negotiation, consistency breaks down, accountability blurs, and ROI becomes political.

After the fact, everyone has a reason the trip was “necessary.”

A Simple ROI Framework That Works

This is where a simple ROI framework can help. Not a massive cost-benefit model that takes months to build, but a practical way to show value quickly using data most travel programs already have.

Instead of trying to measure everything, focus on three core areas where travel programs consistently deliver value:

• Cost efficiency

• Operational efficiency

• Risk and control

If you can show measurable improvement in these three areas, you can prove ROI fast.

1. Cost Efficiency: Are You Spending Smarter?

This is where most programs start, and for good reason. Cost efficiency is the easiest value to understand, but it still requires accurate data.

Examples of cost efficiency metrics include:

• Average ticket price trends by route or supplier

• Policy compliance rates and out-of-policy spend

• Supplier utilization and leakage

Where many programs struggle is pulling this data together.

With graspANALYTICS, travel agencies and corporate programs can normalize booking and payment data into a single, reliable dataset. This allows teams to quickly identify where spend is increasing, where policy is breaking down, and which suppliers are actually delivering value.

After implementing graspANALYTICS, Duluth Travel was able to fundamentally change how they show value to clients. Instead of relying on static reports or pre-built dashboards, the team now walks into business reviews with live, flexible data they can explore in real time.

That is ROI through clarity.

2. Operational Efficiency: Where Time Turns Into Money

Operational efficiency is often overlooked because it is harder to quantify, but it is one of the fastest ways to show real value.

Ask simple questions:

• How much time is spent reconciling travel and payment data?

• How many manual steps exist between booking and reporting?

• How often do teams chase missing or inconsistent data?

These inefficiencies add up quickly.

graspPAY provides a clear example of operational ROI. By using virtual cards designed specifically for travel, agencies and corporate programs can dramatically reduce reconciliation issues.

In practice, this often translates into hours saved each week for finance and operations teams. When you multiply that time savings across a year, the ROI becomes obvious.

3. Risk and Control: The ROI of Fewer Problems

Risk is often harder to quantify because it shows up in the problems that never happen.

The challenge is that risk increases when systems operate in silos. When booking, payment, and reporting data live in different places and do not align, gaps emerge.

By connecting these systems and standardizing how travel and payment data is captured and reported, Grasp Technologies helps reduce those gaps.

When organizations can point to fewer exceptions, smoother audits, and stronger controls, that is real ROI — even if it does not appear as a direct cost savings on a spreadsheet.

Bonus Metric: Accelerated Growth

This one is often the most contentious – but likely the most impactful. Business travel is a powerful catalyst for accelerating corporate growth because it enables deeper market penetration, strengthens client relationships, and unlocks new revenue opportunities that virtual engagement alone cannot match. 

In-person meetings and industry events allow companies to build trust, negotiate deals more effectively, and gain firsthand insights into customer needs and competitive landscapes, all of which contribute to faster strategic expansion and commercialization. Studies show that optimizing business travel investment can yield significant return. According to GBTA, U.S. firms could see a net operating margin of $14.60 for every $1 spent and unlock an estimated $2.4 trillion in potential sales by aligning travel with business goals. 

Additionally, companies with strategically managed travel programs can achieve higher revenue growth relative to peers, illustrating how purposeful travel drives business performance and competitive advantage.

Turning ROI Into Better Decisions

Post-trip ROI is hard. Pre-trip ROI is harder.

The right question often isn’t “What is the ROI?” but:

• “What is the expected value, and what evidence supports that expectation?”

• “What would change our mind?”

• “What is the cheapest way to achieve the same objective?”

• “How will we know afterward if it worked?”

The key to proving ROI fast is not just measuring these areas, but telling the story clearly.

Start small. Pick one or two metrics in each area and track them consistently, metrics such as average ticket price by route or market over time, percentage of in-policy vs. out-of-policy bookings or YoY or QoQ cost per trip for similar travel patterns. Over time, patterns emerge and those patterns make ROI easier to defend.

Final Thought: ROI Is About Confidence

At its core, ROI in travel is about confidence. Confidence in your data, confidence in your decisions, and confidence when leadership asks hard questions.

The goal isn’t to produce a perfect ROI number.
The goal is to create a travel system that makes smarter choices repeatable while preserving the value travel exists to create.

When travel programs focus on cost efficiency, operational efficiency, and risk together, they move from just managing travel to proving its value.

And that is when the conversation changes.