Two datasets, published within weeks of each other by two different research organizations, describe the same region in ways that should not fit together and somehow do.
A recent study from Skift, a leading voice in global travel research, measured regional adoption of AI for trip planning and found Latin America at the top of the list, ahead of North America, Asia, and Europe. Meanwhile, the GBTA’s own index shows the same region sitting at the bottom of nearly every measure of formal travel governance: the lowest adoption of expense management systems in the world, and roughly half the rate of managed travel programs compared to the global average.
I want to hold both facts at once, because I think the temptation is to pick the flattering one and ignore the other, and the real story only shows up when you refuse to do that.
The adoption number
Start with what Skift found. Across every region measured, business travelers use AI to plan trips more than leisure travelers do, and Latin America shows the highest rate of AI-familiar travelers who have used or intend to use AI for trip planning, ahead of every other region in the study.
This is not a small gap. It is the region leading, not trailing, on a technology adoption curve that most global narratives assume moves from developed markets outward. I have written before about why this pattern keeps showing up here: a region that never fully built out the infrastructure a previous technology required is often the one that adopts the next technology fastest, because it has less legacy behavior to unlearn.
The governance number
Now the other half of the picture, and it is a genuinely different kind of fact.
Only about a third of companies in Latin America use a formal expense management system, the lowest adoption rate of any region in the GBTA’s data. Roughly half require or encourage the use of a managed travel program or booking tool, compared to close to two-thirds globally. By almost every formal governance metric this industry tracks, the region sits at or near the bottom.
There is a detail inside that same data that keeps this from reading as simple underdevelopment. Among companies in the region that do have access to a formal expense system, 82% submit expenses through a mobile app, one of the highest rates measured anywhere. The adoption is not absent. It is unevenly distributed, concentrated wherever a good enough tool actually exists.
Why these are not the same finding
It would be easy to collapse these two datasets into one sentence: this region loves technology but lacks discipline. I think that sentence is wrong, or at least imprecise enough to mislead anyone building a strategy on top of it.
AI adoption for trip planning and formal expense governance are not two points on the same curve. They are two different kinds of behavior, responding to two different kinds of incentive. A traveler deciding whether to ask an AI assistant for a hotel recommendation is making an individual choice, in the moment, with no organizational friction standing between the impulse and the action. A company deciding whether to roll out a formal expense system is making an institutional choice, one that requires procurement, training, and a supplier willing to build for the specific regulatory and behavioral texture of the region.
The first kind of adoption happens the moment a good tool exists, because nothing organizational has to move for an individual to try it. The second kind of adoption has historically required someone to build the specific infrastructure this market needs, and that infrastructure, until recently, mostly didn’t exist here in a form that fit.
The gap is not a verdict on the region
I think the natural reading of a region ranking first in one measure and last in another is that something is wrong with the region. I want to argue for the opposite reading.
A market that adopts individual technology fastest while lacking institutional infrastructure is not a broken market. It is a market waiting for the institutional layer to catch up to behavior that already exists. The demand signal is already there, visible in the AI adoption number. What has been missing is not appetite. It is a formal system built specifically for how this region actually operates, rather than one imported from a market with different payment rails, different regulatory defaults, and different behavioral starting points.
That is a different, and much more investable, story than the lazy version. A region resistant to good tools is a hard market to enter. A region that adopts good tools instantly, once they exist, and has simply been underserved by formal infrastructure until now, is close to the best market there is to build for.
What this means for anyone building or buying here
For a company building travel technology for this region, the lesson is specific: the AI adoption number is your permission to move fast, and the governance number is your instruction manual for what to build. Travelers here will use an AI-driven tool the moment it exists and works. The thing that has to be earned, separately, is the institutional trust that gets a company to mandate the tool formally, and that trust is built through governance features, not through AI features. Audit trails, policy enforcement, data visibility. The unglamorous half of the product.
For a company buying travel management here, the lesson runs the other way. Do not read your own low adoption of formal systems as evidence that your travelers resist structure. The data suggests the opposite: your travelers are already comfortable with far more sophisticated tools than the systems your company has offered them. The resistance, if there is any, is more likely to be institutional inertia than traveler preference.
Two numbers, one honest read
So here is where I land, holding both datasets at once instead of picking the one that tells a cleaner story.
This region is not behind on technology and it is not undisciplined about governance. It is a market where individual behavior has outrun institutional infrastructure, which is exactly the condition that precedes the fastest kind of catch-up growth, once someone builds the infrastructure that behavior has already been waiting for.
The AI adoption number and the governance gap are not contradicting each other. They are describing the same opportunity from two different vantage points, and the opportunity is larger, not smaller, for the distance between them.
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.