Do You Belong In an Open or Closed Travel Tech Garden?

It has been almost two months since the long awaited “public secret” was announced by SAP and Amex GBT on Oct. 3, and during that time the two partners have been busy communicating details of their new strategic partnership to the wider travel industry, while no doubt also spending some serious time and energy on explaining the commercial rationale and service benefits to their respective customer bases around the world.

As stated in my LinkedIn post just a few days after the announcement, I truly respect the decision made by the two travel giants, and I wish them the best of luck with the future product development and eventual delivery. Hopefully they will set a new standard in terms of how things can be done.

There are already clear signs of some dramatic fallout from the announcement, however, as both TMCs and corporate buyers around the world have stated (some formally, others in confidence) that rather than going down the road outlined by these giants, they’ll opt for change that this announcement will trigger. That leads to an interesting debate about what type of business or program you prefer:

• Would you rather walk into a “walled garden” where you can have anything you want, assuming it exists inside the walls?
• Or would you prefer the “open ecosystem” approach where you have complete freedom of choice and can select any given solution and service regardless of the origin?

There are pros and cons with both approaches, so rather than saying one is better than the other, I will outline what characteristics you can look for in order to decide which model is right for you (by the way, this is relevant for travel buyers and TMCs alike, even though these groups obviously are looking for very different values when they make a decision).

The “walled garden” option is typically designed around a limited or restricted choice model where the supplier decides what services they will promote, and under which commercial terms they are made available. Consider your mobile phone – it comes with a number of mobile apps preloaded based on decisions made by your network provider, and you can then add mobile apps subject to your phone manufacturer and the network provider allowing this to happen.

In the travel industry the best example is content—the walled garden model will limit your choices of how you get content as well as under which commercial terms the content will be available, while the open ecosystem model will allow you to select any combination of content and secure your own commercial terms accordingly.

While the open ecosystem might sound like the better choice, it does come with the burden of more work. You have to put in the effort to make the right decisions and establish the associated commercial agreements and technical solutions, which is one of the main reasons many customers prefer the “walled garden” model: It requires less effort to get something in place which is “good enough” to move forward.

With the arrival of Agentic AI and the massive expectations of rapid innovation in the travel industry, it might make sense to ask yourself a few key questions to determine which model is right for you:

• Do you want to experiment with multiple products and solutions?
• Do you want access to all content options without having to ask for permission
• Do you want access to new leading-edge innovations as soon as they are launched?

If you answered “yes” to two or three of the above questions, then you are probably better suited to an open ecosystem model, and you should consider creating a framework where you can try new things without relying on your TMC to make this possible. If you answered “no” to two or three of the above questions, then you are most likely better served by a “walled garden” model and should stay in that environment.

Before you jump to conclusions, however, consider this: After 20 years of relatively slow innovation, the corporate travel tech stack is ripe for disruption, and it is very likely we will see completely new AI-native products emerge over the next 12 months which quite simply don’t fit into the legacy model when it comes to servicing and settlement. These new products will no doubt be extremely traveler focused and, as such, will create a new demand from your travelers to get access to these smart services. This will more than likely only be possible in the open ecosystem model, so even if you personally prefer the walled garden approach, the pressure from travelers might force you to change your position.

2026 is truly shaping up to be an exciting year in terms of innovation in the corporate travel segment, and it will happen at a speed which is hard to imagine after 20 years of snail-paced transformation. Get ready for an exciting journey!