As airfare costs surge, 82% of companies turn to AI to keep business moving, according to GBTA global survey
Latest GBTA poll of over 500 global corporate travel leaders points to record concerns about business travel affordability
Business travel is no longer optional. Deals close in person, partnerships are built face-to-face, and corporate expansion depends on movement. Even after years of accelerated digitalization, the demand for strategic in-person encounters has intensified rather than diminished. Yet the cost of maintaining those agendas is under unprecedented pressure. Rising oil prices driven by conflicts in the Middle East have pushed up the cost of jet fuel, the primary input of the aviation sector, triggering an accelerated pass-through to airfare prices worldwide.
A global survey released this week by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), the world’s leading association for the corporate travel industry, surveying more than 500 travel managers, procurement, facilities and finance leaders across multiple regions, confirms the scale of the challenge. Concerns about business travel affordability reached 82% of respondents, up from 70% in January. Geopolitical instability was cited as the top risk by 79% of respondents, making it the industry’s leading concern globally. Only 41% of leaders declare themselves optimistic about 2026, compared to 59% earlier in the year.
For companies, the equation is now clear: travel cannot stop, but maintaining the pace is increasingly expensive. The response is already taking shape among most of the leaders surveyed by GBTA. According to the poll, 41% of travel buyers say their organizations are proactively implementing AI use cases, while another 28% already leverage AI embedded in existing travel tools. In total, more than two-thirds of the global market has already adopted or is adopting AI as a strategic lever to drive efficiency and preserve budgets.
In Latin America, VOLL, the largest digital corporate travel agency in the region, has emerged as one of the clearest examples of how this transformation is already generating concrete value. The company developed VOLL Smart Hub, the first marketplace of artificial intelligence agents dedicated to corporate travel and expense management in the region. VOLL recently released consolidated Q1 2026 results: more than R$ 3 million (approximately USD 600,000) in direct savings for clients, with an average 15.29% saving on air ticket volume issued and automatic recovery of 23% of negotiated hotel rates that, without continuous monitoring, remained unavailable to corporate travelers.
Among VOLL’s enterprise clients, several large corporations have already reported substantial results over recent years. Banco Itaú, one of the largest financial institutions in Latin America, recorded R$ 157 million (approximately USD 31 million) in savings. XP Inc., a Nasdaq-listed wealth management firm, registered R$ 100 million (approximately USD 20 million) in cost reduction in 2025, with a Net Promoter Score of 92 on the VOLL platform. Grupo Águia Branca, one of Brazil’s largest transportation conglomerates, accumulated R$ 22 million (approximately USD 4.4 million) in hospitality savings over a decade, maintaining its average daily rate at 2013 levels while the broader market accumulated more than 83% inflation in the same indicator.
“The GBTA survey confirms what we see daily across our 300+ enterprise clients in Latin America”, says Luiz Moura, co-founder and Chief Business Officer of VOLL. “Top leadership at large companies is facing a simple but decisive choice: reduce the intensity of their expansion agendas, or find smarter ways to travel while spending less. Technology and artificial intelligence are, today, the bridge between those two realities. The competitive advantage lies in adopting them before the cost of inaction consolidates on the bottom line. In markets outside the US, where operational complexity and currency volatility compound the cost pressures, the urgency to deploy AI is even greater, and the returns proportionally higher.”
About me
I am an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience at the intersection of tourism and technology. I am co-founder and Chief Business Officer of VOLL, the largest mobile-first corporate travel and expense management platform in Latin America, and a recognized reference in the development of the corporate travel industry.
A Marketing specialist from Fundação Dom Cabral, I serve on the Tourism Council of FecomércioSP and on the Executive Council of the Latin American Association of Corporate Events and Travel Management (Alagev). A frequent traveler and close observer of human behavior in motion, I write and speak about innovation, digital transformation, entrepreneurial leadership, and the future of corporate travel.