In June 2026, Morning Brew and Engine partnered on a survey of 439 business travelers and travel administrators about how their companies actually handle business travel. Fifty-nine percent of respondents work at small or midsize companies.
Morning Brew published the full study. Below is a look at what stood out most for small and midsize businesses specifically, and why we're digging even deeper into this data in the weeks ahead.
A few numbers that stood out
- Just 21% of small and midsize businesses use a dedicated travel management platform, compared with 73% of large and enterprise companies.
- The average person spends 7.8 hours a month, roughly 94 hours a year, on business travel admin, more working days than the average American gets in paid vacation.
- Industry conferences and trade shows are the single biggest driver of business travel. SMBs travel to them even more than large companies do: 70% versus 55%.
- 42% of SMB travelers have gone unreimbursed for more than $250 of their own money in a year.
- Two-thirds of SMB admins say a dedicated platform's ROI is hard to justify, even though SMBs that already use one spend 40% less time on travel admin than those that don't.
- 45% of companies without a platform say it's because they aren't "big enough" to need one.
Nothing in the survey says SMBs travel less or need less structure than bigger companies. The gap looks like a perception problem, and the perception doesn't match how much time these companies are spending on travel admin.
Read the full study
Morning Brew's coverage goes deeper into how these numbers break down and what SMB admins and travelers said about fixing them. Read the full study on Morning Brew.
More from this data
This is a first look. Over the next few weeks we're publishing a series of original pieces that each dig into one part of this survey:
- The gap between SMB and enterprise travel platform adoption, and why it's mostly a myth about company size
- What out-of-pocket travel spending really costs employees, and how often it goes unreimbursed
- Why business travel admin eats 94 hours a year, and what that costs in staff time
- Why conferences and client meetings are driving most business travel this year
Check back here for links as each one goes live.
Get started with Engine for free if you want to see what a free, no-contract travel platform looks like for your own team.
Frequently Asked Questions
About this research
These findings come from a proprietary market survey conducted by Morning Brew and Engine in June 2026, reaching 439 people in the Morning Brew audience who identified as business travelers, travel administrators, or both. Fifty-nine percent of respondents work at companies with fewer than 500 employees ("SMB" throughout this analysis).
Cite these findings: Findings based on a proprietary market survey conducted by Morning Brew & Engine, June 2026 (N=439). Read the full study on Morning Brew, or reference this analysis at engine.com/blog/smb-business-travel-study.
References
- Findings based on a proprietary market survey conducted by Morning Brew & Engine, June 2026 (N=439). Morning Brew article
