Are most airline tickets non-refundable?

Yes. On major US carriers, the cheapest fare shown is usually non-refundable, and refundable versions of the same seats cost more.

Can you get a refund on a non-refundable ticket if the airline cancels?

Yes. DOT rules require airlines to refund you in cash, automatically and to your original payment method, when they cancel or significantly change a flight and you turn down the alternative. There's one temporary exception: DOT isn't enforcing it for flights that airlines only renumber and operate without significant change through July 7, 2027. When the refund does apply, fare type doesn't matter, and credit card refunds must arrive within 7 business days.

What's the difference between non-refundable and basic economy?

Standard non-refundable fares can usually be changed for the fare difference and cancelled for a travel credit. Basic economy is non-refundable and, on most carriers, non-changeable, with credit that's fee-based or unavailable after the first 24 hours.

Is there a way to get cash back if a refundable flight price drops after booking?

Yes, if the fare is refundable and booked through Otto. When a price drop alert arrives, you confirm the lower fare, Otto cancels the original ticket, and the airline refunds your card. Non-refundable fares aren't tracked because the original ticket can't be cancelled for cash.

What happens if I don't show up for a non-refundable flight?

On most major US carriers, a no-show forfeits the ticket's value entirely. Delta, United, and American typically cancel the remaining itinerary and keep the fare with no credit issued, so if your plans change you should cancel before departure to preserve any available travel credit. Southwest is the main exception, generally holding the funds as travel credit even after a no-show on most fares.

Does travel insurance cover a non-refundable flight?

Sometimes. Standard trip-cancellation policies reimburse non-refundable fares only for covered reasons such as serious illness, injury, jury duty, or a documented emergency, and they require receipts. Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) upgrades broaden coverage to almost any reason but typically cost 40–50 percent more, must usually be purchased within 14–21 days of the initial trip payment, and generally reimburse only 50–75 percent of the non-refundable cost. Some travel credit cards, including Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum, also include trip-cancellation coverage when the ticket is purchased with the card.

Business Travel Software: How to Choose the Right Tool Without Overbuilding for Your Company's Size

Compare business travel software for 50–200 person companies. Learn the 5 evaluation criteria, enterprise features to skip, and vendor questions to ask before signing.

The right business travel software for a 50–200 person company is one that solves your specific booking or expense problem at your trip volume, without the admin overhead built for enterprises. Most tools on the market fail that test in one of two ways: enterprise platforms assume a dedicated travel manager you don't have, and expense-first tools treat booking as an afterthought so leakage keeps happening.

The rest depends on which problem you're actually solving, which features you can skip, and which vendor answers reveal fit before you sign. Read on for the five evaluation criteria, the enterprise capabilities that waste money at your size, and the questions that expose the real cost of ownership.

The Three Problems Business Travel Software Solves

Business travel software solves three problems buyers routinely conflate: booking visibility, policy compliance, and expense reconciliation.

Booking Visibility

Booking visibility breaks when trips happen outside one channel. Travelers hop across supplier sites, online travel agencies (OTAs), hotel front desks, and other consumer channels, and none of it feeds a central record.

About three in 10 travelers say they never book trips through corporate online booking tools or agents, and most travelers book at least some of their trips through unmanaged channels. That means you can't see total spend or find your travelers in an emergency.

Policy Compliance

Policy compliance breaks for behavioral reasons. Booking outside required channels is the single largest compliance issue, flagged by 35% of respondents. Travelers leave the channel to chase loyalty points, conference room blocks, and better prices. Those decisions happen before payment, so policy enforcement has to live inside the booking flow. An expense tool catches the violation weeks later, after the money is gone.

Expense Reconciliation

Expense reconciliation breaks even when bookings are compliant, because booking records and actual charges are different datasets. Expense report processing costs run $58 and 20 minutes per report. Automated matching between card transactions, receipts, and booking records closes that gap.

Key Criteria for Evaluating Business Travel Software Fit

Look at implementation timeline, booking experience, policy enforcement, receipt handling, and support. If a tool takes too long to launch or too much effort to use, adoption tanks before finance sees a dime of benefit.

Implementation Timeline and Resource Requirement

Ask how long until the first traveler books through the tool. If the answer involves a project team, IT resourcing, and multi-month data migration, the tool was built for a bigger company. Purpose-fit tools for smaller programs go live in weeks. Lightweight options are immediate to a few days.

Online Booking Tool (OBT) vs. Conversational Booking

Adoption comes down to whether travelers can book without learning an OBT. Companies with smaller travel spend have driven the highest self-booking tool use, reaching an average adoption level of 72%. Conversational booking, where travelers just ask for trips in plain language, kills the training barrier. Hard adoption data on it doesn't exist yet.

Policy Enforcement at Booking

Enforcement timing drives compliance. The closer the control sits to confirmation, the less cleanup finance does later. Once the booking is made outside policy, the money is already spent.

Receipt and Expense Documentation

Ask whether the tool spits out expense-ready receipts automatically or expects travelers to photograph and file them. Even enterprise automation is fragile. Hilton stopped providing Concur e-receipts in 2016.

Support Model

When trips fall apart, travelers want to call someone. Only 10% of business travelers prefer chatbots over a human customer care agent when facing a disruption.

Enterprise Features Smaller Companies Don't Need

Three enterprise capabilities that look impressive in a demo but deliver little at your trip volume:

Supplier negotiation tooling. Hotels won't cut corporate rates without serious room-night volume. Below that threshold, the module sits unused.
Analytics dashboards. Patterns need transaction volume to emerge. A small program produces too few data points to make the charts useful.
Enterprise duty-of-care modules. The basic traveler tracking a self-serve OBT already gives you should cover the need. A full risk module is overkill.

Two workflow patterns that quietly break adoption:

Multi-layer approvals. When the person booking the trip is also taking it, extra approval steps just add friction—and push simple trips into consumer channels. That reopens the exact visibility gap the tool was supposed to close.
Step-heavy booking flows. If a tool has more steps than the trip requires, it trains travelers to route around it. Cost matters less than behavior here—complexity reintroduces the leakage problem you bought the software to fix.

Categories of Business Travel Software Compared

Shortlists usually mix booking-first platforms with expense-first products, and AI booking assistants now show up in the same evaluation. Separate the categories before comparing features. Each one assumes a different operating model.

Enterprise booking platforms (Navan, Perk, and SAP Concur) lead with travel booking and layer expense management and reporting on top. They assume an admin runs them and expect a travel program mature enough to keep employee data clean.
Expense-first tools (Ramp, Brex, Expensify) started as corporate card and expense products. On Ramp and Expensify, travel booking is a secondary feature. The category solves card spend and expense control. Booking behavior sits outside its scope.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered booking assistants add conversational booking and policy enforcement to managed programs and give travelers an alternative to the OBT. Implementation weight in this category isn't standardized yet, so validate setup effort before treating it like a mature OBT replacement. Traveler trust is early too: only 2% of U.S. consumers are willing to let fully autonomous AI agents book on their behalf. These assistants fit managed programs where travelers avoid the OBT, simple trips turn into call-in transactions, and leakage eats program ROI.

At 50–200 employees, scattered booking behavior without a managed channel usually creates the program problem. For unmanaged companies, the first call is whether a lightweight managed channel can create a reliable spend and traveler record before enterprise overhead makes sense. Direct Travel customers face a narrower version of the same problem: the managed channel exists, but OBT friction limits use.

For Direct Travel programs where that friction drives leakage, Otto the Agent adds conversational booking inside the managed channel so adoption climbs without another OBT rollout. The goal: keep policy indicators, receipts, support, and traveler records in the managed flow instead of tacking on another interface.

Questions to Ask Vendors Before Signing a Contract

Use vendor demos to test post-signing realities. The answers should show whether the tool can run at your staffing level and trip volume, not just whether the feature list looks complete.

What does implementation actually require? Get specifics on IT involvement and migration work, plus the training travelers will need.
What's your adoption rate among clients in the 50–200 employee range? Ask for documented adoption at companies your size, and whether the benchmark counts mandated or recommended usage.
What happens when a traveler needs help after hours? Confirm who answers first, whether it's a person or a chatbot, how it's billed, and whether per-call charges apply.
What are the exit terms? Get contract length, non-renewal notice periods, and written data ownership language covering export format and timing.

If after-hours support leans on chatbot escalation, travelers will wait until morning or spin up unmanaged spend to solve the problem now. When that pattern hits routine bookings and urgent changes, the support model becomes an adoption and fulfillment-cost problem, not just a service preference.

Choosing Business Travel Software Travelers Will Actually Use

At this company size, the right category keeps trips in-channel without piling on administration your program can't support. Once you separate booking visibility, policy compliance, and expense reconciliation, the decision stops being about feature grids and starts being about adoption, implementation weight, support, and trip volume.

For growing companies without a TMC, the practical fit is a lightweight managed channel you can test before committing to enterprise overhead. For customers, the test is whether the existing managed channel gets easier to use and cheaper to support. Otto is free to try, with no contract or commitment, so the test doesn't require enterprise overhead.

Start with Otto to improve managed-channel adoption and reduce fulfillment costs without overbuilding your travel stack.

Business Travel Software FAQ

What is business travel software?

Business travel software is any tool a company uses to book trips, enforce policy, and document spend. The market includes booking-first platforms and expense-first card tools. AI booking assistants also sit in this category when they add conversational booking and policy enforcement.

What's the difference between a booking tool and an expense tool?

A booking tool controls the transaction before it happens, surfacing compliant options in a managed channel. An expense tool works afterward, matching card charges to receipts.

How much does business travel software cost?

Pricing varies widely and usually blends free tiers, per-transaction fees, per-seat licensing, and enterprise per-report pricing. Implementation fees are separate, so compare total first-year cost against vendor quotes rather than the license price alone.

Do small companies need business travel software?

Once trips become routine and finance can't see travel cost until month-end, or can't locate travelers during a disruption, a managed channel starts earning its keep. Below that, consumer channels plus manual expense tracking usually cost less.

How can smaller companies get managed-channel adoption without overbuilding?

Measure the pain as an adoption gap, not a traveler preference. For programs where travelers avoid the OBT or call agents for simple bookings, Otto adds conversational booking to the managed channel so more trips stay visible, compliant, documented, and less expensive to fulfill.

DEC 4

After 9 months in Beta, Otto is now open to everyone! Read our announcement