The touchless trip: What happens when your TMC gets out of the way
There's a moment all business travelers know when you step out of an Uber at a hotel entrance and you're just done. You focus on the trip, not the paper trail. Brook Armstrong, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Blockskye, uses that analogy when he describes what business trips should feel like:
“It's just the travel, it's just the hotel. So how can we make all of those other processes disappear, so it's not part of your day and you're also not paying for it?”
That’s the definition of a touchless trip and it’s the opportunity Blockskye is taking on to modernize corporate travel. The path to it runs through a TMC that is willing and able to step out of the way. When the intermediary layer comes out, two things happen together.
The enterprise gains managed travel program visibility it can act on: fuller supplier content, unbiased fares, and direct travel settlement that closes the loop on reconciliation.
The traveler gets a program that keeps pace with how they already move, book, change, and pay, with digital trip completion as a natural result.
Both outcomes come from asking the TMC to do less. Most TMCs can’t do that.
What does it mean for a TMC to get out of the way?
Armstrong’s instinct, that a good experience is one where an enterprise and its travelers stop noticing the mechanics, is the starting point for a touchless trip. Booking, servicing, and expense reconciliation have historically forced a traveler, or someone on their behalf, to manage a series of separate steps. A touchless trip compresses those steps by removing the layers that made them separate in the first place. It means more travel and less management.
For most travel programs, the technology stack behind a TMC is treated as a fixed cost of doing business. Each added layer brings a handoff, adding cost, delay, or a place where the data record can fall through the cracks. None of that is required, it's just familiar.
What changes for the enterprise when the intermediaries come out?
Buyers and suppliers get closer together. When a TMC connects directly to suppliers instead of routing bookings through intermediary distribution, the economics shift for everyone. Blockskye’s Chief Commercial Officer, Hank Benedetti, puts the legacy cost at roughly 20% of a trip's value, extracted through GDS fees, hotel commissions, and manual expense processes sitting between buyer and supplier. Remove those intermediary layers, and content gets more complete too. Travelers see an airline's full fare catalog, not a filtered slice of it.
Search results appear without a hidden bias. When a TMC's revenue depends predominantly on supplier commissions, search results can end up reflecting that relationship. A transparent model removes the commercial incentive to rank suppliers and fares based on a TMC’s preference over the corporation’s. What travelers see is what's actually available, ordered by relevance and your policy, not by someone else's margin.
There’s a ledger travel managers can trust. The persistent gap in managed travel program visibility has never really been a shortage of data. It's a shortage of data anyone can rely on without comparing duplicate records across each layer of the travel and payments ecosystem. An enterprise ledger-based architecture creates a single, verifiable record of every booking, change, and payment, so travel managers can report program performance with confidence instead of caveats.
Direct settlement removes payment layers. While credit card rails and legacy distribution margins offer established utility, direct settlement provides a credible and efficient alternative by removing intermediary friction and merchant fees. Direct settlement routes payment from buyer to supplier without those layers, lowering transaction costs and removing the reconciliation work that used to follow a card statement home.
What changes for the traveler when the program moves with them?
When the traveler changes plans, the record changes with them, automatically. Travelers don't stay in one channel, and they were never going to. They book through the online booking tool, change a flight from the airline's own app at the gate, or adjust a hotel reservation directly with the property. True direct supplier connections mean the program record can update across all of it automatically, the data doesn’t get lost by the intermediary, and the itinerary doesn't break just because a traveler did something entirely human.
90% of trips never need an agent. A consumer-grade booking experience, like the one provided by KAYAK for Business, is familiar to travelers with easy-to-use filters and self-service functionality, plus built-in corporate policy controls. Around 90% of trips now reach digital trip completion, start to finish, without agent assistance. That number is proof, not a promise: A touchless trip is a measurable outcome, where the TMC’s booking tool doesn’t get in the way.
The receipt hunt is ending. Direct settlement with dual authorization means trips are booked, paid for, and expensed straightaway, without extra steps. Then for travelers who pay for on-trip expenses with their own loyalty cards, automated expense management is changing the least enjoyable part of business travel: the receipt hunt that follows every trip home. Blockskye Capture, currently in pilot, automatically detects, categorizes and reimburses those expenses as they happen. It's one less step than the traditional mix of TMC-OBT-expense tool intermediaries allows for today.
How does a touchless trip work, step by step?
A touchless trip breaks into three moments, each one lighter than it used to be.
Booking. A traveler books through the OBT or a connected supplier channel. Policy applies automatically in the background, and the record is accurate instead of needing correction later.
Payment & settlement. The trip settles directly between buyer and supplier through direct travel settlement, with a real-time posting to the ERP that finance doesn't have to chase. The expense and reconciliation work that used to land on the traveler and travel manager simply isn't there.
Mid-trip changes. A flight moves, a hotel date shifts, a traveler makes the change directly on the supplier app. When the connection is direct, without an intermediary in the way, the ledger captures the change in real time. The data doesn’t fall through the gaps, the itinerary stays accurate, and duty of care doesn’t break down.
What does this add up to for a travel program?
None of this requires travelers to change how they behave. It requires a TMC to stop assuming it has to sit at the center of every step, and charge for it. When it doesn't, the enterprise gets managed travel program visibility built on a verifiable ledger and the traveler gets a program that moves the way they already do. Digital trip completion is the number that proves both sides are working at once.
The next version of managed travel won't be defined by better tools inside the same model. It will be defined by a different model. One where the program doesn't need to catch up to how travelers actually behave, because it was built around that behavior from the start. That's what the shift to direct connections, ledger-based records, and direct settlement makes possible. It’s already working at the world’s largest enterprise programs that choose Blockskye.
If you want to see where your own program stands before you take that step, the Modern Operating Model Scorecard is a practical starting point. Use it to pressure-test what your current model does today before you decide what to change. And if a vendor evaluation is already on the calendar, our guide to running a stronger corporate travel RFP walks through the questions that separate a good RFP from a great one.
FAQs about touchless corporate travel
What is a touchless trip in corporate travel?
A touchless trip is a business trip where the TMC stops acting as an intermediary. That’s a role that traditionally adds cost, friction, and influence at each stage of the journey. Instead, booking, changes, and settlement are completed digitally and without agent assistance, creating a direct, seamless connection between the travel programs, its travelers, and suppliers.
What is direct travel settlement?
Direct travel settlement is a payment method that routes funds from the corporate buyer to the travel supplier without passing through card networks or other intermediary layers, which lowers transaction costs and reduces the reconciliation work required afterward.
How does removing TMC intermediary layers improve managed travel program visibility?
Removing TMC intermediary layers improves managed travel program visibility by using direct supplier connectivity and creating a single, ledger-based record of every booking, change, and payment, so travel managers and finance teams can report on program activity without needing to verify or adjust the data first.
What is automated expense management in a modern travel program?
Automated expense management in a modern travel program refers to systems that detect, categorize, and reconcile trip-related expenses automatically, removing the manual receipt collection and expense reporting that traditionally follows business travel.
Why does digital trip completion matter to a travel program's efficiency?
Digital trip completion matters to a travel program's efficiency because it measures the share of bookings, changes, and cancellations handled without agent assistance, which is a direct indicator of how much operational burden has been removed from both the traveler and the program.
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