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Small meeting travel accounts for 35-50%+ of today’s business travel, and it’s only becoming more important. Whether it’s a team training, an executive offsite, a quarterly business review, or something else, businesses recognize the value of in-person time together, to build connection and drive performance. However, managing travel and planning small meetings is still more difficult than it should be.
TROOP, Spotnana, and Direct Travel recently partnered with the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) to survey Travel Managers in North America to learn more about their experience with business travel and small meetings and the connection between them.
3 small meeting takeaways in 2025
Business travel and small meetings intersect, especially when meetings involve travel for dispersed teams. Yet, the challenges for managing both are clear.
1. Small meetings are often unmanaged
Small meetings, like team offsites or executive sessions, are happening all the time. But surprisingly, 53% of them are planned outside a formal travel program, according to the GBTA report.
Why? Meeting planning often falls to various roles within a business whenever a gathering is required. Travel Managers and meeting planners tend to operate in silos, with 46% of respondents saying they work in different departments, with different goals and systems.
This disconnect creates missed savings, repetitive work, and inefficient processes. When no one owns the process, it’s harder to track ROI, ensure policy compliance, or even know how many meetings are happening company-wide. Aligning teams and tools is the first step to solving that.
2. Budget remains a challenge
Small meetings may look simple, but they’re often difficult to budget.
According to the report, cost management is the top pain point when meetings are planned outside of a centralized process. Planners often work without clear budgets, or scramble to estimate costs last-minute. The result is overspending, off-policy decisions, and time lost chasing approvals.
This is why more than two-thirds of respondents said they want a centralized platform for managing attendee travel bookings, RSVPs, meeting details, and special requests. Tools like TROOP bring travel and meeting planning together, giving you clearer estimates, more control, and fewer surprises when it comes to spend.
3. Travel is still a source of friction
Planning a meeting is only part of the process. Coordinating travel is another and another place where challenges can occur.
Here’s what Travel Managers identified as the biggest issues:
- Budget uncertainty and management (45%).
- Attendee coordination (42%).
- Time-consuming research (40%).
- Booking and managing travel (37%).
This can be caused due to planners relying on manual methods, like spreadsheets, emails, and one-off bookings, to juggle group travel. Add in out-of-policy hotels or last-minute guest travel, and things quickly become unmanageable.
However, planners can start with clear meeting objectives, leverage data to pick the best location, and lean on platforms that keep everything (travel, budgets, attendees) in one place. By centralizing your tool and approach to meeting planning, you can be more prepared for surprises.
Connecting small meetings and travel
Small meetings might be everyday business, but they deserve better tools, better processes, and better visibility. At TROOP, we continuously learn from meeting planners and Travel Managers and apply those insights to keep innovating. Because small meetings shouldn’t mean small impact.
Discover how organizations are evolving their approach to meetings and travel
