Travel admin overwhelms 63% of business travelers. With Travel Agent, employees can book in-policy travel in a single conversation, generate expense reports automatically, and get reimbursed faster—all in a system that already knows their preferences and business policies.
Almost two-thirds of business travelers (63%) feel overwhelmed by travel admin, and 58% say it pulls their focus from their actual work. The culprit is usually a patchwork of disconnected tools. Employees book in one system, then file expenses in another, where they have to reconstruct the trip after the fact: matching receipts, coding costs, and hunting down the taxi ride they forgot to log. That adds up to about 94 hours a year, or roughly 12 working days spent on paperwork.
That’s why I’m excited to share that Workday Travel Agent is now generally available. Employees can book in-policy travel in a single conversation, generate expense reports automatically, and get reimbursed faster. It’s our first big step toward a future where the busywork around business travel handles itself.
We built Travel Agent with Spotnana, whose technology powers the booking experience. “By building a conversational AI user experience for both travel and expense on top of Spotnana’s technology, Workday is eliminating the friction of jumping between disconnected tools and spending days on post-trip paperwork,” said Steve Singh, executive chairman and CEO at Spotnana. “Workday Travel Agent is giving travelers hours of their lives back by enabling them to book, manage, and automatically expense in-policy travel in a single conversation.”
“Workday Travel Agent is giving travelers hours of their lives back by enabling them to book, manage, and automatically expense in-policy travel in a single conversation.”
Steve Singh
Executive Chairman and CEO
Spotnana
Planning a business trip used to mean visiting a flight site, a hotel site, and a rental car site separately, typing the same details into each one. With Travel Agent, employees plan the whole trip by simply describing what they need, and it reserves flights, hotels, and rental cars together. It already knows their loyalty programs, seat preferences, and passport and visa details, so there’s nothing to re-enter. Booking for a teammate is just as simple.
Faster booking is only part of the story. Every option Travel Agent surfaces is checked against company policy before anything is booked, so compliant choices show up first. That means problems are caught while the trip is still being planned, not discovered after someone has already clicked “Purchase.”
The same ease carries through the rest of the trip. When plans change, employees can modify or cancel their trip directly with the Travel Agent. There’s no need to call a hotline, wait on hold, or track down yet another tool.
Expenses are where Travel Agent saves the most time, and it’s the part I’m most excited about. The moment a trip is booked, the receipt is generated automatically and added directly to employees’ expenses—no manual entry or digging through their inbox for a confirmation email days later.
Expenses are where Travel Agent saves the most time, and it’s the part I’m most excited about.
For travel program owners, that same connected data also means summary-level reporting on the program today, without stitching together exports from separate booking and expense systems.
At Workday Rising 2026, Workday’s Senior Vice President of Product Max Wessel shared where travel and expense is headed: “The best expense report is the one you never have to do.”
That’s our vision for Travel Agent. Instead of piecing a trip back together once you’re home, you land to find the work already done.
“The best expense report is the one you never have to do.”
Max Wessel
Senior Vice President of Product
Workday
And that shift is bigger than faster booking or simpler expense management. It changes the experience of business travel by bringing booking, trip management, and expenses into one connected flow.
Workday already runs the systems that manage your people and your money, and the world’s leading organizations trust it to act on both. Because your workforce and financial data live in one place, Travel Agent can book with speed and confidence. Every trip stays in policy, reflects your preferences, and carries the right controls from the start.
We’re putting that shift to work at Workday, too. Our own employees are among the first to test the Travel Agent, sharing real-time feedback with product teams to make sure it truly eliminates travel headaches before it rolls out broadly.
“Our priority is empowering our people to connect, collaborate, and drive our business forward. Integrating intuitive travel directly into Workday removes the friction of planning and effortlessly feeds into expense management, ensuring the entire journey—from itinerary to receipt reconciliation—is seamless, compliant, and stress-free,” said Lindsey Kirchberg, senior director, procure-to-pay strategy and operations, Workday.
Booking is just the start. Travel Agent will soon handle more of the trip, from the first question to last-minute changes. Here’s what’s coming by the end of the year.
Ask anything: Get plain-language answers about your travel policy or your own logged expenses.
Plan whole trips: Get a complete itinerary in one proposal, instead of piecing together flights and hotels one at a time.
Book for the team: Let one agent arrange travel for a group or event, all at once.
Go further, stay informed: Book rail alongside flights and cars, and get live alerts when plans are disrupted.
Curious what a trip with zero expense reports looks like today? Learn more about Workday's Travel Agent.
More Reading
Discover how decision intelligence bridges the gap between continuous workforce data and decisive executive action to overcome organizational paralysis.
We believe these recognitions, alongside Workday’s distinction as the only vendor to be recognized as a Customers’ Choice in the 2026 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer, reinforce our strategy for trusted finance in the AI era.
At Rising this week, Workday Data Cloud opened the System of Record directly to AI agents, with no extracts, no duplicate data, and no rebuilt security. Here's how its four layers give agents live data, shared business context, and governed actions they can be trusted with.
