Travel managers struggle with booking flexibility and last-minute changes, survey says

Efficiency, seamless systems, and AI tools also shape business travel decisions in SG.

Singaporean travel managers identified flexibility in bookings and cancellations as a top concern with 66.7% flagging this issue whilst 61.1% flagged last-minute changes and cancellations as their main operational challenge, according to SAP Concur’s 2026 Southeast Asia Business Travel Pulse Survey.

High costs were also cited by 48.2% of respondents, above the Southeast Asia (SEA) regional average of 38.6%.

Seamless integration between HR and finance systems is required by 61.8% of Singapore decision-makers, slightly above the regional average of 58%.

AI adoption for optimal itineraries that balance policy, cost, and productivity is reported by 59.3% of respondents, compared with 56.9% regionally.

Hyper-personalisation ranks lower in Singapore, with 42.6% of managers rating it very important, against 52.9% across SEA.

The survey, which covered over 150 travel decision-makers across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, highlights a shift from focusing solely on cost to measuring “total trip value.”

SAP Concur said the study reflects how corporate travel strategies in Singapore are increasingly focused on operational friction, risk management, and productivity in high-frequency travel environments.

Follow the link for more news on

SAP

Travel

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia