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Emburse, Direct Travel to deliver connected, AI-powered travel, expense experience

Monday, August 03, 2026 — 16:49:44 (UTC)

Aug 3, 2026 12:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Emburse and Direct Travel Launching Strategic Partnership to Deliver a Connected, AI-Powered Travel and Expense Experience

The new partnership will simplify business travel, improve spend visibility, and help organizations make better real-time decisions.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Emburse, a global leader in travel and expense management, and Direct Travel, a leading corporate travel management company, today announced a new strategic partnership to deliver a more connected business travel experience. The partnership brings together Avenir, Direct Travel’s intelligent travel management platform, powered by Spotnana, and Emburse’s Expense Intelligence and AI capabilities.

Emburse's AI-powered expense automation, payments, policy controls, and financial intelligence, combined with Avenir's modern travel infrastructure, global content, trusted data, insights, and personalized global service, will unify travel and expense. Share Together, Emburse's AI-powered expense automation, payments, policy controls, and financial intelligence, combined with Avenir's modern travel infrastructure, global content, trusted data, insights, and personalized global service, will unify travel and expense across the entire journey. This open ecosystem will help organizations simplify travel, optimize spend, and operate with greater visibility while preserving customer choice, flexibility, and control.

Unlike traditional integrations that share information only at specific points in the travel journey, Emburse and Avenir will enable travel, financial, and operational data to flow continuously. This will provide travelers with a smoother, more personalized experience while helping travel managers and finance leaders automate more processes, gain a complete view of spend, and make faster, better-informed decisions.

“Business travel doesn’t happen in isolated moments, and the technology supporting it shouldn’t operate in silos,” said Michele Shepard, CRO of Emburse. “By bringing together Avenir, powered by Spotnana, and Emburse Expense Intelligence, we’re creating a shared intelligence layer that connects travel and finance in real-time. With data flowing between both platforms and AI working across them, organizations can guide travelers toward smarter decisions, reduce friction, and create more value at every stage of a business trip.”

Travel in Motion: Where Intelligence Moves with Every Journey

Business travel is constantly changing. Flights are delayed, meetings move, itineraries shift, and expenses accumulate along the way. Yet many travel and expense platforms still operate as separate systems, creating unnecessary manual work and preventing organizations from having visibility into the full travel journey as it unfolds.

Emburse and Direct Travel are working to change that.

By connecting Avenir’s modern travel infrastructure, powered by Spotnana, with Emburse Expense Intelligence, the partnership will bring travel and expense into one continuously connected experience. Live itinerary updates, booking activity, traveler preferences, payments, receipts and expense data flow between the platforms, helping organizations respond intelligently as trips evolve instead of waiting until reconciliation to understand what happened.

The value extends beyond simply exchanging data. Each platform will use intelligence from the other to improve the experience and inform better decisions. Travel context helps strengthen financial controls and automate expense processes, while expense and spend intelligence helps create a complete, trusted view of traveler activity, spend, and program performance worldwide.​ The result is a smarter, more responsive experience that reduces friction, improves visibility and creates greater value with every interaction.

“Avenir was built to modernize corporate travel by providing the most direct access to content, data and service,” said Sarah Kuberry Martino, Chief Product Officer, Direct Travel. “Our partnership with Emburse extends that connected experience to include expense, payments and financial operations. Together, we’re creating a travel and expense ecosystem where modern infrastructure, shared intelligence and AI work seamlessly together to simplify every journey and help organizations make smarter business decisions.”

Connected AI That Delivers Better Outcomes

By connecting the AI capabilities of Avenir with Emburse Expense Intelligence, the partnership will enable AI to work across travel and expense as one connected experience. Real-time travel information helps AI automate expense processes, while spending data enables it to deliver more relevant travel guidance and policy recommendations.

This intelligence helps organizations to:

Deliver personalized guidance using live itinerary, policy and spend data. Automatically complete expense reports. Synchronize travel, payment and expense workflows. Provide proactive policy guidance and recommendations. Respond to trip changes and traveler needs in real-time. Give travel and finance teams a shared view of spend. Generate actionable insights and intelligence. Continuously improve AI recommendations. The result creates a connected ecosystem where information moves with the traveler. Travelers gain access to broader content, more personalized support and less manual expense work.

Travel managers gain real-time visibility into traveler activity, supplier opportunities and program performance without giving up control. Finance teams gain earlier spend insights, stronger governance, automated reconciliation and greater confidence that travel decisions align with policy and reduce risk.

Through Travel in Motion, Emburse and Direct Travel are turning connected travel and expense intelligence into measurable business value—helping organizations reduce costs, strengthen control and guide smarter decisions in real-time while delivering a simpler experience at every stage of the travel journey.

About Emburse

Trusted globally by more than 12 million finance leaders, travel managers and professionals, Emburse helps organizations control spend across complex finance operations, serving over 20,000 organizations in 200 countries and territories—including Global 2000 enterprises, SMBs, public-sector agencies and nonprofits.

By proactively managing and accurately validating spend, Emburse delivers robust financial governance, enhanced compliance and greater visibility into spend behaviors while dramatically streamlining the process for every employee.

Emburse’s Expense Intelligence approach transforms reactive expense management into infrastructure for strategic growth. Powered by Emburse AI, it orchestrates corporate spend across travel booking, reimbursements, AP and payments, embedding dynamic policy controls and predictive insights directly into workflows. This real-time approach empowers organizations to adapt quickly, reduce risk and guide spend before money leaves the business.

To learn more, visit www.emburse.com and follow Emburse on its social channels @emburse.

About Direct Travel

Direct Travel is one of the world’s largest travel management companies, focused on delivering exceptional, innovative solutions to every client and traveler. With a long history of proven market expertise, we blend advanced technology, superior service and expert insight to drive tangible value and meaningful savings across Corporate Travel, Leisure Travel, Meetings & Events and specialty travel businesses.

Through Avenir, our next-generation platform developed with leading technology partners, we provide the industry’s broadest inventory and a modern, real-time shopping experience that empowers travelers and simplifies program management. What truly sets us apart is the human care behind the technology, delivered by an experienced, passionate team dedicated to anticipating needs and delivering exceptional service at every step.

For more information about Direct Travel, visit www.dt.com.

Contacts Media Contact:

Monique Daniel Director of Communications media@emburse.com

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Partnership