Business travelers trust AI. Their employers don't.
Seven in ten business travelers would use AI their company never approved. Seven in ten fake receipts one auditor catches are now made by AI.
by Markus Busch
Business travelers are ready to hand over the booking. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. business travelers fielded this fall by Engine, which sells a corporate booking platform, 86% said they would let AI book their flight or hotel. SAP Concur, which sells the travel and expense software many of their employers run, found in April that 72% of business travelers have used or would use AI tools their company never approved. Three in ten said their employer offers none.
The companies paying for those trips are far less relaxed.
71% of the fakes are AI-made. AppZen checks expense claims for large companies. In March 2025, none of the fraudulent receipts its system flagged had been made with AI. By mid-May 2026, 70.8% were: 1,471 receipts from 745 employees at 174 companies. The median fake was $32. That is about the price of a lunch, a taxi or two drinks at a hotel bar, and it sits under the limit where most companies approve a claim without anyone looking. AppZen sells the detection, so the numbers serve its pitch. They still count receipts it caught. In Concur's survey, about nine in ten CFOs and travel managers said they suspect employees use AI to fake expenses.
95% for advice, 57% for action. Travel managers draw the same line on booking. In a GBTA survey fielded in March, 95% were comfortable with AI recommending a hotel at the negotiated rate. Only 57% were comfortable with AI rebooking a trip on its own.
89% from the first ten results. The largest travel management company is building the answer. Amex GBT has put its booking assistant, Egencia AI, inside Microsoft Teams and Google Chat, and connected it to Claude. A traveler books in a chat window they already use, and the AI books from the company's list, inside the company's rules. On Egencia, 89% of bookings come from the first ten results it shows.
What it means for hotels. The AI booking a company trusts is the one made in its own tool. That tool searches the hotels on the company's list, at the rates the company negotiated, and sorts them before the traveler sees a thing.
A traveler who plans the trip in a chatbot the company never approved can still end up at your front desk. Whether the stay lands on the company account, and counts toward next year's volume when the rate is renegotiated, depends on where the room was booked.
Read also: Amex GBT put business travel's AI inside Claude — and got the agent that actually books · Booking a business trip is becoming a message, and your hotel still has to be on the list first
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