Company Type: TMC
Regions Served: Global
Target Market Segment: Unmanaged travelers, SMEs, large national companies, multinational companies
Select Corporate Users: Adobe, Anthropic, Canva, Cummins, Enbridge, Evotec, Heineken, Informa, Ingersoll Rand, Netflix, OpenAI, Shopify, Unilever and Zoom
Users/Seats: More than 12,500 corporate users
Annual Bookings: Unspecified
Annual Transaction Volume: $11 billion in gross booking volume
Set Up / Implementation Fees: Free for companies up to 300 employees. Navan Expense is also free for the first five users.
Ongoing Fixed Charges: Fees apply for companies with more than 300 staff. Total costs depend on travel volume, company size and feature access.
Transaction Charges: Certain transactions include a handling fee, charges not publicly available
Update Frequency: Continuous updates
EXECUTIVE TEAM
- Ariel Cohen, CEO & Co-Founder
- Ilan Twig, CTO & Co-Founder
- Ofer Ben-David, Chief Operating Officer
- Grant McGrail, Chief Revenue Officer
- Yuval Refua, Chief Product Officer, Payments & Expense
- Michael Riegel, Chief Customer Officer
- Erika White, Chief Marketing Officer
WHAT THE COMPANY SAYS
Navan states it provides consumer-grade usability with enterprise-grade control through an all-in-one platform, bringing together OBT and TMC services, payments, expense management and offerings for meetings and events. It recently acquired BoomPop, an AI-native platform for meetings and events.
Dynamic, intelligent pricing algorithms are able to adjust budget thresholds in real time based on seasonality, events and market capacity, according to company sources. There is a big focus on autonomy and self-service for employees on the Navan platform.
Its content and booking engine can also now be accessed through conversational enterprise tools like Slack, Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude, through a branded concept called “Navan Anywhere.” This uses Google's agent-to-agent (A2A) protocol. According to Navan, this allows policy data, past booking behavior, preferences and loyalty rewards to be brought into any conversation with such tools.
Executives state that travelers complete bookings in an average of seven minutes. Bookers can also modify or cancel reservations directly on the Navan platform in seconds, without support, while unused ticket credits are automatically tracked, reassigned and applied to future bookings. This helps prevent travel policy leakage.
The company states that it typically delivers over 90 percent platform adoption, and a global median savings of approximately 15 percent on initial travel budgets for new clients.
Content Strategy
Navan says it offers an “unmatched” multi-source inventory, aggregating global content in real time on its proprietary platform.
Air & NDC: Real-time content from over 600 airlines. Navan also encompasses over 25 airlines via NDC channels, alongside two major GDSs, including Sabre and Amadeus, which are integrated in real time, as well as low-cost carriers. Their NDC strategy involves directly connecting with suppliers. One in every three flights booked with Navan is now via NDC.
Hotel: There are 2.6 million hotels on the Navan platform. Lodging content combines GDS inventory, major online travel agencies and an industry-first direct connection with Hilton. Navan has direct connections with Wyndham, Travelodge UK and Premier Inn. The firm connects with OTAs such as Expedia (including Hotels.com), Booking.com, Priceline, and MakeMyTrip. It also integrates Engine, an embedded hotel content provider.
The Navan Rewards program, according to the firm also aims to incentivize employees to book hotels below permitted caps. It does so by offering rewards, which are redeemable against personal and leisure travel.
Car: Recently integrated car rental firm Virtuo in France. It offers a host of rental car firms and rideshares. On the expense side it can automatically categorize costs such as mileage, fuel and parking.
Rail: According to the California-based firm, it offers access to more than 40 rail providers globally. Access to European rail content has been improving, Navan has recently integrated Caledonian Sleeper. The company claims it has one of the “broadest selections of rail carriers of any TMC.” It now offers rail carriers across 10 European countries including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Navan also offers VIA Rail in Canada.
Technology Innovation & Roadmap Claims
Navan has particularly focused on agentic AI embedding artificial intelligence into its booking processes, disruption management and reconciling expenses. AI agents, according to the company, are able to take action on travel policies, trip context and employee preferences. Such architecture allows its virtual AI travel agent “Ava” to resolve roughly 60 percent of travel queries.
Recent launches include Navan Edge. This is a new AI assistant that coordinates flights, hotels and restaurant reservations in one personalized conversation, proactively managing disruptions and offering support, according to the Palo Alto-based company.
“The more it continues to learn the more it will improve, especially as disruptions to travel continue to rise. We believe in AI, it is in our DNA,” said one executive.
The end-to-end platform player says its core objective is to remove friction from every stage of the business travel lifecycle. This focus has seen it achieve overall CSAT ratings of 96 percent and an NPS score of 44.
WHAT CONSULTANTS SAY
An aggressive and ambitious end-to-end platform player with a strong roadmap for AI roll out. Travelers need essentially no training with this easy-on-the-eye solution, it means adoption rates are very strong. There is also an impressive range of supporting tools on the same platform, for instance reporting, risk management and sustainability.
“They truly believe the sky is the limit. This platform has immense potential. However, for their customers, there are also fundamentals that need attention before they are reaching for any stars,“ explains one consultant.
The integrated and bundled offering of TMC, OBT, payment and expenses may not be for all businesses. Navan is often selling its platform to chief financial officers or chief technology officers, this can mean going over the heads of dedicated travel teams, which can be difficult for buy-in and adoption.
“The user experience and the single T&E platform, as well as speed of deployment are winners, while the global service model and dealing with complexity in multinational companies are not winners for Navan,” explains one consultant.
They add: “Post-IPO, buyers are also starting to ask about pricing durability and whether support scales with growth. These are fair questions to put in any RFP.”
Card and expense integration is making significant inroads among businesses adopting Navan, although “the company struggles a little with more complex payment structures, such as a mix of lodge, individual cards or virtual credit cards,” explains another consultant.
Reporting may be clean and close to real-time, but according to one consultant it is a bit behind the legacy tools if buyers are data intensive users. Another said that Navan’s platform is not very adaptable to more complex approval processes. For instance, pre-approvals for certain travel types. Tailored messaging in the system is also a bit limited.
WHAT BUYERS SAY
A very strong user experience is a hit, where travel and expense are combined into one platform. However, the prominence of Navan content versus content from a buyer’s preferred suppliers can be an issue.
As one buyer said: “Navan often points users to their negotiated content. This is probably due to commissions. They do not suppress Navan content if a client has their own negotiated rates. It means that a client may not be able to leverage their own travel spend and volumes in the future for their own negotiations.”
Rolling a TMC and an OBT into one with a high degree of tech and AI support is going to work for some businesses, but for others with highly complex, nuanced and differentiated travel programs, they could struggle.
Once considered more of a play for small and midsize travel programs, Navan has been challenged to convince the market that its human agents have enough travel background to support complex itinerary issues. However, Navan has developed its total offering in recent years, upping its attention to human support alongside the tech and has attracted significant larger enterprises to the platform, including AI tech darlings that share its culture but others in healthcare and even more traditional banking and financial services companies.
Across the buyers BTN spoke to, a theme emerged that enterprise customers get preferenced attention compared to smaller programs and on the service side are largely happy with account managers and agent-based service. Smaller and midsize clients—especially those with nuanced programs that include corporate negotiated rates and tighter policy controls—can have challenges with Navan’s human service, default settings and content preferencing strategies.