The Travel Manager App Review (Top 5 Platforms Compared)

For a corporate travel manager, the right software is not just a tool; it's their command center. It's the single platform from which they oversee the company's entire travel program, managing policy, controlling spend, ensuring traveler safety, and analyzing performance. While the traveler-facing booking experience is critical for adoption, the power and usability of the administrator side of the platform is what determines whether a travel manager can do their job effectively and strategically.

A great travel manager app empowers them to move beyond reactive, administrative tasks and become a proactive, data-driven program leader. It gives them the visibility and control they need to optimize spend and support their travelers. This guide provides a head-to-head review of the top 5 travel management platforms from the perspective of a travel manager, focusing on the features that are most critical for their success.

The Travel Manager's Core Needs

When evaluating a platform, a travel manager is looking for a specific set of capabilities:

A Powerful and Flexible Policy Engine: The ability to easily build and automate the company's travel policy.
A Clear and Efficient Approval Workflow: The tools to manage approvals and exceptions quickly and effectively.
A Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics Suite: The ability to get a real-time, consolidated view of all travel data.
Robust Traveler Tracking and Risk Management Tools: The features needed to fulfill the company's Duty of Care.
User-Friendly Administration: An intuitive interface for managing users, suppliers, and system configurations.

With these criteria in mind, let's compare the top contenders.

The Top 5 Platforms for Travel Managers

1. Routespring

For the Travel Manager: Routespring offers an incredibly powerful and flexible back-end that is also surprisingly easy to use. It's designed to give travel managers enterprise-grade control without the enterprise-grade complexity.
Key Strengths for Managers:
- Best-in-Class Policy Engine: The visual policy builder makes it easy to create granular, tiered policies for different employee groups. Its ability to handle dynamic hotel rate caps is a major advantage for cost control.
- Automated, Data-Rich Approvals: Approval workflows are highly customizable, and the notifications sent to managers are rich with context (e.g., "missed savings" data), enabling smart decisions.
- Unified Data and Analytics: Because travel and expense are natively unified, the reporting is complete and real-time. A manager can see the full, true cost of a trip in one place.
- Superior User Experience: The high traveler adoption rates driven by the great UX mean that nearly all travel data is captured in the system, giving the manager a complete and accurate dataset to work with.
Overall: For travel managers who want a perfect balance of powerful control, ease of administration, and high traveler adoption, Routespring is the top choice.

2. SAP Concur

For the Travel Manager: Concur has been the go-to for enterprise travel managers for decades. Its power lies in its almost limitless customizability.
Key Strengths for Managers:
- Unmatched Configurability: If you can imagine a policy rule or an approval workflow, no matter how complex, you can probably build it in Concur. It's a true enterprise workhorse for global compliance.
- Deep Financial Integration: It offers the deepest possible integration with SAP's own ERP systems, which is a major benefit for companies running on SAP.
Considerations: This power comes at the cost of extreme complexity. The administrative interface is notoriously difficult to use and often requires specialized training or third-party consultants to manage. The poor traveler-facing UX also leads to low adoption, which means the manager's data is often incomplete.

3. Navan (formerly TripActions)

For the Travel Manager: Navan provides a modern, clean admin dashboard that is a significant step up from legacy systems.
Key Strengths for Managers:
- Good Policy and Approval Tools: The platform offers a solid set of policy controls and a modern approval workflow that is easy to manage.
- Strong Analytics: The reporting dashboards are visually appealing and provide good real-time insights into travel spend.
Considerations: The platform's features are heavily optimized around the use of its own corporate card. A travel manager at a company using a different payment strategy may find the system less flexible.

4. TravelPerk

For the Travel Manager: TravelPerk provides a solid, user-friendly admin experience, particularly for managing bookings and travelers.
Key Strengths for Managers:
- Simple Administration: The admin dashboard is generally straightforward and easy to navigate for core tasks like adding users and setting basic policies.
- Large Inventory: The platform's access to a vast travel inventory is a benefit for ensuring traveler choice.
Considerations: While strong on the booking side, TravelPerk's policy engine and reporting capabilities are generally considered to be less powerful and flexible than those of Routespring or Concur. It's a great tool for managing travel, but it may be less robust for managing a complex travel program.

5. BCD Travel (with TripSource)

For the Travel Manager: As a major global TMC, BCD offers a comprehensive suite of services that combines its TripSource technology platform with a strong human service layer.
Key Strengths for Managers:
- Strategic Account Management: BCD excels at providing dedicated account management and strategic consulting to help large companies optimize their travel programs.
- Global Service Footprint: For companies with a large, global presence, BCD's network of offices and agents provides a high level of on-the-ground support.
Considerations: The technology platform, while improving, may not feel as modern or seamlessly integrated as the tech-first platforms like Routespring or Navan. The service model is often better suited to large enterprises than to more agile mid-market companies.

Feature Comparison Matrix

| Feature | Routespring | SAP Concur | Navan | TravelPerk | BCD Travel (TripSource) | | ---------------------------- | -------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | -------------------------- | --------------------------------- | | Policy Engine | Excellent (Dynamic & Tiered) | Excellent (Highly Customizable) | Good (Modern & Simple) | Basic to Good | Good | | Approval Workflow | Excellent (Automated & Mobile) | Good (Powerful but Clunky) | Excellent (Mobile First) | Good | Good | | Reporting & Analytics | Excellent (Real-Time & Unified) | Good (Powerful but not Unified) | Good (Real-Time) | Good | Good (Often with Analyst Support) | | Traveler UX & Adoption | Excellent (#1 on G2) | Poor | Excellent | Good to Excellent | Moderate | | Expense Integration | Excellent (Natively Unified) | Poor (Disconnected Modules) | Good (Card-Centric) | Moderate (Improving) | Integrates with Concur/Others | | Implementation | Excellent (Weeks) | Poor (Many Months) | Good | Good | Moderate to Poor | | Best For | All-around best for SMBs & Mid-Market | Massive, SAP-based Enterprises | Tech companies on Navan card | SMBs focused on booking UX | Large enterprises needing service |

Conclusion

For the modern travel manager, the choice of a travel management app is a choice about their own effectiveness. A clunky, disconnected system will force them into a reactive, administrative role. A powerful, intuitive, and integrated platform will empower them to be a strategic leader.

While each platform has its strengths, Routespring offers the most compelling all-around package for the modern travel manager. It provides the powerful, enterprise-grade controls they need, but delivers them through a simple, intuitive interface that is easy to manage. It combines this with a superior traveler experience that drives the high adoption necessary for a successful program. For travel managers who want to save time, save money, and elevate their role, it is the clear choice.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is the most important feature for a travel manager? While all are important, a powerful and flexible policy engine that is easy to configure is arguably the most critical. This is the tool that allows you to automate cost control, which is a core part of the travel manager's role.

2. How do I get my finance team to approve the switch to a new platform? You need to build a business case focused on ROI. Use a platform's features to model the potential savings from increased policy compliance, automated unused ticket recovery, and reduced administrative time. A modern platform will pay for itself.

3. We have a lot of complex, multi-leg international travel. Can a modern platform handle this? Yes. A good modern OBT can handle complex bookings. However, this is also where the human support element is critical. Your platform should be backed by 24/7 access to expert travel agents who can assist with the most complex itineraries, providing the best of both worlds.

4. How much time should a travel manager have to spend "in the tool" each day? With a modern, automated platform, a travel manager's time in the tool should be minimal for day-to-day operations. They should be able to "manage by exception," only needing to intervene for specific approval requests or issues. Their main focus should be on higher-level strategic work, such as analyzing data from the platform's reporting dashboards to find new savings opportunities.

5. How does a travel manager app help with Duty of Care? The app is a critical tool for Duty of Care. By providing a live traveler map, it allows the manager to instantly locate employees in a crisis. The platform can also send automated risk alerts and provide travelers with one-tap access to your 24/7 emergency assistance provider.