While Travel Managers often have visibility into transient travel and large corporate events, small meetings are different. 66% of meetings have fewer than 50 attendees, and are often planned independently across teams using disconnected tools, manual workflows, and scattered budgets. This results in the most common meeting type remaining largely outside the visibility of managed travel programs
The challenge facing Travel Managers goes beyond tracking costs. Without visibility into how small meetings are planned, they are often brought in after key decisions have already been made.
Which teams are planning meetings? How much travel spend is associated with those meetings? Are bookings flowing through approved channels and suppliers? What meeting-related costs are coming next quarter?
In many organizations, those questions are difficult to answer because small meetings happen across departments, budgets, and booking tools with little centralized oversight.
Small meetings often involve airfare, hotels, meals, ground transportation, and meeting space, but those expenses may be managed by different teams and paid from different budgets. As a result, Travel Managers often see fragments of meeting-related spend without visibility into the full picture.
Creating greater transparency around meeting-related travel starts with involving Travel Managers earlier in the planning process. That requires more consistency around how meetings are planned, how travel decisions are evaluated, and where meeting data lives.
Most companies don't have a consistent way to evaluate location, cost, or whether travel is actually necessary. A meeting location may be chosen because it's familiar or convenient, without considering where attendees are traveling from or whether another option could reduce travel time and cost.
Establishing guidelines for how teams plan small meetings creates an opportunity for Travel Managers to be involved before decisions are made and build a standardized process for others to follow.
This gives organizations a more consistent framework for evaluating travel spend, logistics, supplier usage, and budget impacts before costs are committed.
In many organizations, Executive Assistants, department leaders, and meeting planners are making meeting decisions without access to the same travel insights that Travel Managers have.
Creating a shared process helps ensure meeting decisions are informed by consistent data and aligned with broader travel program objectives.
When meeting data lives across department budgets, expense reports, and individual booking tools, it's difficult to identify patterns. Centralizing that information into a shared workflow or tools gives Travel Managers the visibility needed to spot trends and act on them.
Small meetings often fall outside managed travel programs, with costs spread across multiple departments. Bringing those meetings into a more structured process gives Travel Managers better visibility into upcoming costs, improves forecasting, and makes it easier to explain spend to leadership.
It also creates opportunities to strengthen travel program adoption, support supplier negotiations with more complete data, and identify areas where costs can be reduced without sacrificing the attendee experience.
Platforms like TROOP help support that shift by connecting travel logistics, attendee details, and budget into a centralized workflow.
The goal isn't to approve every small meeting. It's to ensure meeting decisions are informed by travel data, budget considerations, and company policies before costs are committed.
With greater visibility into small meetings, Travel Managers can better support planners, improve forecasting, strengthen travel program performance, and help the organization make more informed decisions about travel spend.