Travel Management Company (TMC)

While a leisure agent focuses on a dream trip, a travel management company (TMC) focuses on efficiency control and savings. Corporations hire TMCs not only to book flights but also to handle the complicated administrative burden of employees traveling for work.

The TMC provides value along three main pillars:

• Policy compliance: The TMC sets up the booking systems to adhere to company rules (e.g., “Junior staff can’t book business class” or “Hotels have to be under $200/night”).
• Negotiated rates: Using the collective volume of all their clients, TMCs negotiate special corporate rates with airlines and hotel chains that are lower and more flexible than public rates.
• Duty of care: In an era of global instability, the TMC provides the technology to monitor where every employee is in the world (through traveler tracking maps) and 24/7 support in emergencies.

A modern TMC is, in essence, a technology aggregator:

• OBT (Online Booking Tool): This is the client-facing software (like SAP Concur, Cytric, or GetThere) used by employees to book their trips. The TMC handles the backend of the OBT, specifically to ensure the content is flowing correctly from the GDS and that the policy rules are applied.
• Profile management: A centralized database that stores information about employees, frequent flyer numbers, and passports to automate booking entry.
• Reporting and analytics: Dashboards that provide the CFO with the ability to visualize travel spend, including trends such as “Who is our most expensive traveler?” or “How much did we spend on Hilton last year?”

The sector is currently experiencing a technological disruption.

• Legacy TMCs (Giants like American Express GBT or CWT): They are very dependent on human agents and traditional GDS technology. They are powerful in global reach and consulting but can be slower in innovating digitally.
• Tech-first TMCs: New entrants (often referred to as Next-Gen or Modern TMCs) such as Navan (formerly known as TripActions) or TravelPerk. These companies have developed their own proprietary technology stacks from scratch and provide a user experience that is more like consumer apps (like Uber) than traditional corporate tools.