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✈️ 11% of spend, 42% of the growth. Do you know what's driving yours?

New Emburse data on $9.1 billion of company expenses: transportation is 11% of spend but accounts for 42% of this year's increase, and it's coming from more trips, not pricier ones. Industry ticket data says the opposite. Here's how to find out which story is yours.

Egor Karpovich

— 5 min read
✈️ 11% of spend, 42% of the growth. Do you know what's driving yours?

This week

On 23 September, Emburse published an analysis of about $9.1 billion in enterprise expense claims from January to July 2026. Total company spend was up 4.8% on the year. Transportation, just 11% of that spend, rose 26.7% and delivered roughly 42% of the entire dollar increase. The more useful finding is where that growth came from. The average transportation claim rose only 6.7%. The number of transportation purchases rose 18.7%. In this dataset, people are travelling more often, and price is the smaller factor. That's the opposite of what the industry's ticket data showed a week earlier: ARC's August figures for US agencies had passenger trips up 5% and the average ticket up 17%. Both can be true, because they measure different companies. What matters is which one describes your company, because the fix for a volume problem is not the fix for a price problem, and 2027 budgets are being set now.

Why it matters

1. A line that's a tenth of your spend can explain nearly half of your overspend. Finance teams tend to review spend by size, so the biggest categories get the attention. Emburse's data shows why that misses things: transportation is 11% of spend but produced about 42% of the growth. If your 2027 review starts with the largest lines, it may skip the one that is actually moving.

2. Volume and price need different responses. In the Emburse data, purchases rose 18.7% and the average claim 6.7%, and the two together roughly account for the 26.7% increase. If more trips are driving your costs, tighter fare caps won't do much; the questions are which trips, which teams and whether each one earned its place. If price is driving them, you negotiate, change booking windows and adjust caps. Most expense reports show only the total, so you can't tell which one you're dealing with.

3. Spend is concentrated with a few suppliers, and that gives you leverage. Across airfare, rail and transit, taxi and rideshare, car rental and parking, more than 70% of spend in the Emburse data went to the top three suppliers in each category. Airfare alone accounted for 75.8% of transportation growth, and British Airways posted the fastest growth of any tracked airline at 42.7%. If more of your volume is going to fewer suppliers, you have a case for a better deal. But you need your own numbers to make it.

What this means for your program

  • Separate trip count from average cost for every transport category. Pull January–September against the same months last year and calculate both numbers for air, rail, rideshare and car rental. Base your 2027 budget on whichever one moved.
  • Take the volume figures to your top three suppliers per category. If one airline or ride provider's share of your spend grew by a third this year, bring that to the table before the next contract renewal, not after it.
  • Push short-haul volume onto rail where it competes. On European routes where a train is a real option, moving some of the extra trips to rail cuts cost per trip without cancelling any travel.
  • Cover the long tail with card and coding rules instead of contracts. In the categories that are not concentrated, such as tolls and fleet costs, Emburse found spend spread across 53 vendors. You won't negotiate with 53 suppliers. Set merchant-category rules on the card and require a cost code at the point of purchase.

The numbers

  • Total enterprise expense spend rose 4.8% year on year in January–July 2026. Transportation rose 26.7% and accounted for about 42% of the dollar increase, despite being 11% of overall spend. Based on about $9.1 billion in Emburse Enterprise expense spend reported in USD. (Emburse via Business Wire, 23 Sep 2026, Business Travel Executive, 28 Sep 2026)
  • The number of transportation purchases rose 18.7% while the average transportation claim rose 6.7%. Airfare made up 75.8% of the transportation gain, followed by taxi and rideshare at 14% and car rental at 8.2%. Emburse says its vendor and theme figures are directional and don't measure market share. (Emburse via Business Wire)
  • Among tracked airlines, British Airways spend grew fastest at +42.7%, ahead of United (+34.0%) and Southwest (+32.2%). Emirates fell 54.7%. Uber spend rose 33.6%. In five transport categories, more than 70% of spend went to the top three suppliers. (Emburse via Business Wire)
  • Industry ticket data shows the opposite pattern. US travel agency air ticket sales hit a record $9.8 billion in August 2026, up 19%. Passenger trips rose 5% to 25.8 million, and the average ticket price rose 17% to $624. (ARC via PR Newswire, 17 Sep 2026)
  • More trips mean more hotel nights, and European rates are forecast to rise in 2027: London +3.6% to +5.4%, Paris +3.1% to +4.8%, Madrid +6.1% to +9.2%. It's the first time Amex GBT's Hotel Monitor has published ranges rather than single figures, citing geopolitical uncertainty and commodity price volatility. (The Business Travel Magazine, 23 Sep 2026, Hotel Business)

Two tools built exactly for this moment

To split volume from price, you need every trip, fare and ride in one record, coded to the team that spent it.

  • Travel Code Expense Management →: bookings, card transactions and receipts reconcile into one ledger, so for each category you can see how many trips there were and what each one cost. It adds receipt capture, automatic checks against your policy, approval routing and Excel export. The next time your transport line jumps, you can see whether it's volume or price instead of guessing.
  • Travel Code Net-60 Card →: 60-day settlement at 0% interest, per-transaction visibility, and budget rules that auto-freeze at 80%. Card-level merchant and coding rules handle the long tail you won't negotiate, and a growing number of trips doesn't have to come out of this month's cash.

The bottom line

Most companies will build their 2027 travel budget as last year's total plus an uplift. Emburse's data shows how that goes wrong. The growth sits in a line that's a tenth of spend, and it's driven by the number of trips rather than their price, while industry ticket data points the other way. Your own expense data will show which applies to you, if it's set up to separate the two. Find out this quarter. If the problem is volume, focus on which trips happen, the mode of transport and supplier deals. If it's price, focus on caps and booking windows. Using the wrong response wastes a year.

What's new at Travel Code

Did you know you can compare a flight, a train and a bus for the same trip on one screen? Travel Code's multi-modal search shows flight, rail and bus options side by side, with the cost and CO₂ of each route. It covers intercity rail across major European, North American and Asian operators, airport express trains, and intercity buses from more than 1,200 operators in 75+ countries. If your transport growth comes from more trips, this is where some of those trips can move to a cheaper mode, and travellers can see the comparison before they book. (Changelog →)

Sources

Travel Code helps corporate travel and finance teams see, control, and reconcile every dollar of trip spend in one platform. travel-code.com · Expense Management · Net-60 Card

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