What is travel leakage? In short, it’s a travel management program flaw and it’s one that’s eroding your data, reducing spend visibility, supplier rate agreements and Duty of Care. 

Travel leakage in a business travel program is relatively straightforward if you’re just trying to put a definition on paper. You can define it in just a single sentence: Travel leakage is bookings made outside a company’s managed travel program. However, as any Travel Manager or Executive who’s dealt with travel leakage knows, during the day to day, this phenomenon is anything but simple.

Travel leakage is one of the costliest and yet least visible problems a Travel Manager faces. Every off-channel booking represents a missed negotiated rate, a gap in spend data, a reduction in supplier volume commitments and a potential Duty of Care blind spot. Still, because of that lack of visibility, some companies significantly underestimate how much leakage their program is dealing with. The bookings that happen outside the managed channel don’t show up in managed program reporting.

Think of travel leakage like more or less an insidious water leak held deep within the walls of a house. You don’t know that it’s occurring, but it’s slowly wearing away at the very foundation of your home. Travel leakage is serious business.

Let’s take a closer look at what leakage costs, why it happens, why it costs more than most programs account for and how you can identify what kind of leakage your company is experiencing. Then, let’s outline a practical framework to address it—sooner rather than later.

Key Takeaways About Travel Leakage

• What is travel leakage? Simply, it’s bookings made outside a company’s managed travel program.
• Travel leakage can affect spend visibility, supplier agreements, Duty of Care and overall program performance.
• You can reduce travel leakage by identifying program friction points and addressing them with clearer communication, better visibility and easier managed booking.

What Is Travel Leakage and Why Does It Matter?

Travel leakage, in plain language, is business travel booked outside the managed travel program.

As a Travel Manager you know that off-channel bookings happen. GBTA research attests to this. Travelers book outside of the program for many reasons. It’s often not malicious. It’s just more convenient or cheaper. Travelers think they’re doing the company a favor.

However, even while it’s something that “happens to everyone” and it’s something that no one’s necessarily contributing to in bad faith, it’s still a systemic problem that’s negatively affecting your entire travel program’s performance, from data integrity to supplier relationships. Then, once you get into the associated unmanaged business travel costs and travel policy compliance costs, your business travel spend management goes out the window.

In short, travel leakage negatively affects all your goals as a Travel Manager.

What’s Behind Travel Leakage

As already alluded, there are many reasons why travel leakage occurs.

Maybe you have a booking tool that’s just not all that Traveler-friendly. It’s slow and less convenient, and Travelers would rather use an alternative—and so they do.

Perhaps Travelers perceive outside pricing to be more favorable, so they book direct or on travel deal aggregator websites. They think they’re doing a good thing by saving some cash, but they don’t know all the ins and outs of the travel budget like you do.

Travelers may also book direct because they worry they might miss out on valuable loyalty points, status benefits and brand-specific perks by booking through company-designated channels, especially if they travel frequently. However, with proper Traveler profile management, loyalty numbers and preferences can be linked to company-designated booking channels, helping Travelers stay compliant while still receiving points and benefits.

That point is worth communicating clearly. When Travelers understand they do not have to choose between compliance and loyalty benefits, they have one less reason to book outside the program.

Whatever the case may be, travel leakage is occurring. It’s not often intentional non-compliance. It’s all about convenience and habits. That said, it still needs to be stopped.

What Travel Leakage Costs Your Program

There are so many compounding costs of travel leakage, going far beyond the simple per-trip rate differences.

Negotiated hotel and airline rates correlate with volume commitments, so when someone books off channel, the booking doesn’t count toward those thresholds, which can affect rate eligibility at renewal.

Spend data becomes incomplete, making it harder to negotiate, report or optimize.

Duty of Care coverage suddenly has gaps for every off-channel Traveler.

And this is just the start. Left unaddressed, it compounds and, if you’re not careful, all that leaking really adds up to a flood of negative consequences.

What to Understand About Travel Leakage

It’s really important that you understand that travel leakage isn’t necessarily a compliance issue. Yes, you’re dealing with non-compliance among your Travelers, but there’s a broader issue at play. There’s something about your travel program that just isn’t working for Travelers.

A high leakage rate is essentially a signal: It usually means the managed channel isn’t competitive or convenient enough to win Traveler behavior. Programs with low friction, transparent pricing and clear communication of benefits consistently have lower leakage rates.

So what do you do?

Start by estimating your leakage rate by using expense report data and card spend compared to managed program bookings. Identify which teams or trip types generate the most off-channel activity. Then, audit your managed booking tool for friction points. Talk to Travelers about their pain points and how you can resolve them, as well as how they stand to benefit from using the program, in terms of both protection (Duty of Care) and convenience.

Then, work with a Travel Management Company to establish a reporting system that makes leakage more easily visible on an ongoing basis. For example, JTB Business Travel’s Advanced Cost Avoidance and Business Intelligence tools support leakage visibility.

Cut Down Travel Leakage at the Source 

Travel leakage is not a new problem, but it is an increasingly costly one as supplier rate agreements become more volume-dependent and Duty of Care obligations grow more complex. The programs that bring leakage under control are not the ones with the strictest policies—they are the ones that make the managed channel the most obvious, convenient and competitive choice. It is a program design challenge as much as a compliance challenge, and it is one worth solving deliberately.

Northstar Travel Group is a JTB Corp company. JTB Business Travel may reference reporting or research published by Northstar; however, all commentary and recommendations in this article are independently developed.