Emburse’s 2024 Business Travel Snapshot Tracks Rising Hotel Rates and Airfares but Steeper Discounts

Report acts as an essential planning tool for corporate travel buyers in 2025

DALLAS, November 20, 2024 - Emburse, whose leading travel and expense solutions power forward-thinking organizations, has released the latest edition of its Business Travel Snapshot. The report reveals year-over-year trends in hotel and airline pricing and offers a forecast for 2025. Based on data from Emburse Travel Analytics (formerly TRIPBAM Analytics), the report provides valuable guidance for corporate travel managers as they negotiate new contracts and plan their spend for the coming year.

Emburse’s data revealed that hotel and airline rates continued to increase through 2024, but discounts became more aggressive:

• Market airfares increased by 7.4% from November 2023 to November 2024, while negotiated fares increased 5.4%. However, the discount gap between market and negotiated fares widened from 14.3% to 16.3% during this period, offering enhanced savings opportunities through corporate agreements.
• Hotel market rates increased 5.4% and booked rates increased 4.5%. Again the discount rate widened to 22.6%, significantly higher than the 5-10% seen coming out of the pandemic. In particular, Chicago, London, and Toronto have seen substantial increases in hotel rates of 12-14%, while cities like Scottsdale, Barcelona, and Boston have moved in the opposite direction, with hotel rate decreases of 4-11%.

Emburse expects airlines to attempt to increase fares for business travel through 2025 to offset lost revenue from the leisure travel sector. Hotel rates are predicted to rise 5-7% in the first half in the U.S. and Europe and flatten out in the second half due to lower inflation and greater capacity as hotels open a record number of new properties.

The Emburse Travel Snapshot outlines strategies for corporate buyers as they enter negotiation season, including how to budget appropriately given rate increases and where to focus negotiation efforts with airlines and hotels. It also explores the impact of NDC and AI on corporate travel.

“With business travel volumes expected to surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2025, and both hotel rates and airfares expected to increase, corporate travel managers will be looking for ways to predict and manage their spend. In particular, corporate buyers will start to rely on AI to mine corporate travel and expense data to best predict volumes by market, per diems by location, acceptable rates and fares and more,” said Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse and author of the report.

To download the Emburse Business Travel Snapshot, visit the website.

Methodology

The data outlined in this report is sourced from Emburse Travel Analytics (formerly TRIPBAM Analytics) and includes global hotel and air data covering North America, EMEA, and APAC. The analysis is based on data pulled on Nov 8, 2024, from Emburse’s system and is based on a 12-month average unless otherwise indicated in the text or charts that follow. The booking data is limited strictly to corporate bookings made by Emburse customers and does not include leisure or group bookings.

About Emburse

Emburse delivers innovative end-to-end travel and expense management solutions that solve for what’s next for forward-thinking organizations. Our suite of award-winning products are trusted by more than 12 million finance and travel leaders, and business professionals around the world. More than 20,000 organizations in 120 countries, from Global 2000 corporations and small-medium businesses to public sector agencies and nonprofits, count on us to manage business travel and employee expenses with ease.

Our highly automated, mobile-first solutions streamline business travel planning, booking and management, and eliminate manual, time-consuming expense submissions, approval and reconciliation. We deliver efficiency and time savings, increase financial visibility, enhance spend control and compliance, and improve the entire business travel experience. This empowers our customers and their teams to deliver meaningful value for their organizations.