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Bringing visibility to hidden hotel spend

In an age of real-time dashboards, predictive analytics, and hyper-personalised digital services, it’s easy to assume corporate travel has kept pace. But beneath the surface of many global programmes lies a persistent blind spot – one that continues to undermine control, compliance, and cost-efficiency.

HRS hosted a webinar session that put this challenge under the spotlight. Led by industry veterans Will Pinnell (SVP Americas, HRS) and Greeley Koch (Managing Director, 490 Consulting), the discussion centred on the enduring opacity of lodging spend, and why artificial intelligence may finally offer a meaningful way forward.

The Visibility Gap

The comparison made early in the session was striking. Referencing the Apollo 8 mission and its 47 minutes of radio silence while orbiting the far side of the moon, Pinnell drew a sharp parallel to how travel leaders experience large segments of their hotel spend: invisible, unauditable, and unactionable.

On average, 40% of transient hotel spend sits outside the scope of managed programmes. That figure climbs significantly when long-stay accommodations, simple meetings, and card-reimbursed hotel nights are included. These are not isolated transactions. They are systemic gaps in the programme architecture, and they compromise far more than financial oversight.

The Cost of Invisibility

The consequences extend well beyond financial oversight. Lack of visibility impacts traveller safety, ESG tracking, policy compliance, and duty of care. It exposes companies to financial leakage and reputational risk — particularly as finance and procurement leaders face increasing scrutiny over indirect spend and cross-border compliance.

Yet perhaps the most critical implication is the strategic one. When travel managers are forced to spend their time resolving fragmented rate issues or reconciling data sources, they’re no longer operating as strategic contributors. As Koch noted, the expectations for travel leaders have shifted dramatically, but the tools supporting them have not.

Fragmented Systems, Fragmented Truths

Much of the problem stems from the ecosystem itself. Corporate travel programmes rely on interconnected but often poorly integrated systems: booking tools, expense platforms, card data feeds, and supplier contracts.

These systems rarely speak the same language, and the consequence is a patchwork of partial truths. For many companies, even the definition of “hotel spend” varies depending on the data source being referenced.

What makes this more than an operational issue — what elevates it to the level of strategic urgency — is the data emerging from the supply side. Recent data from NYU’s School of Hospitality, co-led by Koch, further highlights the issue from the supply side.

In other words, the disconnect isn’t just on the buyer’s side. Suppliers are struggling to maintain compliance with the very agreements that corporate programmes rely on for leverage.

From Process to Orchestration

Solving this doesn’t require marginal process improvements. It requires orchestration — and increasingly, orchestration powered by AI.

That’s where Copilot, HRS’ AI-driven platform, enters the conversation. Positioned as a true orchestration layer, Copilot is designed to surface insight and enable immediate action. Built on deep data integration and intelligent automation, the platform allows travel leaders to move from static analytics to real-time decision-making.

From Insight to Action

Travel leaders can ask open-ended questions — from “What’s my ADR in New York this quarter?” to “Which properties show persistent rate leakage?” — and receive instant answers.

More importantly, they can take immediate action based on the insight, without waiting for a quarterly review or offline follow-up.

One of Copilot’s values lies in its flexibility. Programmes can prioritise by region, policy, or persona — whether that means dialling up savings focus in the US or emphasising sustainability in Europe. The orchestration logic can adapt to what matters most, where it matters most.

A New Era of Travel Leadership

The session was a candid conversation about the need for change, and the tools finally capable of enabling it.

As expectations rise and programmes grow more complex, orchestration is becoming a core capability. In this context, AI is a real strategic differentiator — the one that corporate travel can no longer afford to ignore. And it may be the only viable path out of the dark.

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