Corporate Travel Is Booming — And So Is the Workload
Corporate travel has rebounded strongly from its pandemic-era lows. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) projects that global business travel expenditure will exceed $1.5 trillion in 2026, surpassing pre-pandemic spending levels for the first time. For travel management companies (TMCs), that recovery is welcome — but it arrives alongside persistent labor shortages and increased client expectations for speed and personalization.
GBTA's 2025 survey of corporate travel managers found that 68% of companies increased their travel budgets year over year, and 55% reported that their travel volumes had grown faster than their ability to manage them efficiently. For TMCs handling those accounts, the operational challenge is processing more bookings, more itineraries, and more expense reports without a proportional increase in staff.
Virtual assistants are filling that gap.
Booking Coordination Across Air, Hotel, Ground, and Rail
Corporate travel bookings involve multiple service components — flights, hotels, ground transportation, and sometimes rail or ferry segments — that each need to be researched, compared, booked, confirmed, and documented in the client's travel management system. For a TMC managing hundreds of travelers across dozens of corporate accounts, this coordination is an enormous volume of transactional work.
A virtual assistant dedicated to booking operations handles the end-to-end process: searching GDS platforms (Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport) or online booking tools for compliant options, presenting choices to travelers or travel arrangers, processing selections, generating booking confirmations, and updating the client's travel management platform. The American Express Global Business Travel 2025 Traveler Report found that corporate travelers who receive booking confirmations within 30 minutes of request report 24% higher satisfaction with their TMC than those waiting longer.
VAs also manage hotel loyalty number and frequent flyer number entry, seat selection, meal preferences, and other traveler profile updates that keep bookings accurate and personalized.
Itinerary Management and Travel Document Preparation
Corporate travelers need clear, consolidated itineraries that bring together every element of a trip — flights, hotels, ground transportation, meeting schedules, and emergency contact information — in a single, mobile-friendly document. Building and maintaining those itineraries, particularly when travel plans change mid-trip, is a constant workload for travel coordinators.
Virtual assistants build and maintain traveler itineraries in platforms like TripIt Pro, Concur Travel, or proprietary TMC systems. When flights are delayed, hotels need to be changed, or meeting schedules shift, a VA updates the itinerary in real time and notifies the traveler. The GBTA's 2025 traveler experience study found that 79% of corporate travelers ranked accurate, up-to-date itinerary information as their top technology expectation from their TMC.
VAs also manage visa documentation checklists, travel insurance enrollment, and entry requirement research for international trips — the due-diligence layer that protects both the traveler and the corporate client.
Expense Report Processing and Reconciliation
Corporate travel generates expense reports, and expense reports generate headaches. Travelers submit receipts, managers approve, finance reconciles — and in between, there are missing receipts, coding errors, policy violations, and delayed submissions that require follow-up. For a TMC offering expense management services, or a corporate travel team supporting internal travelers, this process is a significant administrative burden.
A virtual assistant manages the expense processing workflow: collecting receipts from travelers, logging them against trip records in platforms like Concur Expense or SAP, flagging policy exceptions, chasing missing documentation, and preparing approval-ready expense reports for manager review. Concur Technologies' 2025 expense management research found that companies with dedicated expense processing support reduce their per-report processing time by 40% and cut out-of-policy exceptions by 28%.
Client Account Administration
Beyond the traveler-facing work, TMCs carry substantial client account administration: contract management, reporting, policy document maintenance, and account review coordination. Each corporate client has its own policy requirements, preferred vendor lists, reporting formats, and escalation contacts — a matrix of detail that grows more complex with each account added.
Virtual assistants maintain client account records, prepare monthly travel summary reports, coordinate quarterly business review logistics, and manage policy document version control. They also handle new traveler onboarding for client accounts, ensuring that profile data is complete and accurate before a traveler's first booking.
TMCs looking to build or expand their virtual assistant team can find vetted candidates with travel industry experience at Stealth Agents.
Sources
- Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), Business Travel Forecast 2025–2026
- GBTA, Corporate Travel Manager Survey 2025
- American Express Global Business Travel, Traveler Experience Report 2025
- GBTA, Traveler Technology Expectations Study 2025
- Concur Technologies, Expense Management Benchmark Report 2025