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Over 400 corporate travel professionals attend second Business Travel Show Asia Pacific, which enjoys a buyer uplift of 12% year on year
· Tarun Kumar wins Asia Pacific Travel Buyer of the Year Award
· Nowadays wins both Asia Pacific Business Travel Innovation Faceoff awards
· Business Travel Show Asia Pacific returns 21 - 22 April 2027
413 corporate travel professionals attended the second Business Travel Show Asia Pacific organised by The BTN Group, part of Northstar Travel Group in Singapore this week, which also saw a year-on-year uplift of 12% in buyer numbers.
“Achieving double-digit buyer growth in year two after such a phenomenal launch last year really is testament to the strength of the Business Travel Show Asia Pacific offering,” said Louis Magliaro, Executive VP of The BTN Group.
“The Business Travel Show series of events, which serves Europe and America as well as Asia Pacific, offers buyers all over the world the ultimate gateway to smarter corporate travel. Over the last two days, we’ve helped 168 buyers with a combined T&E spend of US$11.8bn to discover new suppliers and enjoy exclusive networking opportunities. 67% of our buyers were new to the show this year, and 64% do not attend GBTA.
“Our first-rate educational sessions - curated by The BTN Group – have been packed out, with industry leaders sharing exclusive announcements and valuable insight into AI, air supply and strategy, SAF, TMCs and booking tools, sustainability, duty or care and crisis response and much more.”
Around 40 exhibitors brought global and local business travel innovation to Singapore, holding over 1,300 meetings with travel managers from across the globe, including Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, India, China, Australia, United Kingdom, Indonesia, United States, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Viet Nam, Macao, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Taiwan.
“It’s been an incredibly positive and energising few days for ALTOUR, with meaningful conversations and a clear sense that buyers are rethinking what they need from their travel programme,” said Natasha Padmaraj, Regional VP APAC and ME, ALTOUR.
“This year’s show makes one thing clear: buyers are no longer willing to compromise between control, experience and cost - they expect all three, delivered with local relevance and backed by trust. Our president Gabe Rizzi’s session this morning really brought that to life, emphasising that cultural fluency across regions, combined with AI and human expertise, is now essential, not optional, for modern managed travel."
One of this year’s hosted buyers - Alex Mady, Travel & Expense Compliance Manager, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change – said, “My favourite part of day one was the talk about AI and travel. Travel managers, I think, were a little bit in fear about AI. We all thought ‘AI will replace us,’ and now we know it cannot replace us. AI can help us and our employees travel safely and help us – as travel managers - create better reporting, more data, better duty of care, etc. We use AI a lot at Tony Blair Institute and that session was very useful. I’ve also met suppliers at Business Travel Show Asia Pacific I knew before – from London – and new suppliers, too.”
An immersive and interactive visitor experience was introduced to the show this year, with attendees invited to take a sensory journey enveloping all the senses, from choosing personalised perfumes and tasting tea, to taking a moment to pause and reset with a five-minute sound bath and frequency scan and creating a unique, custom mini figure.
Tarun Kumar wins Asia Pacific Travel Buyer of the Year
Tarun Kumar, Regional Director Travel and Expense Program (APAC), SAP-SE, was named APAC Travel Buyer of the Year after beating fellow finalists Fei Wang, Category Manager Travel & Expense, APAC, Philips and Kathryn Retumban, Senior Lead, Global Hotel Program, Emerson.
The award celebrates outstanding achievement and innovation in managed corporate travel across the Asia Pacific region. Tarun Kumar led the SAP Asia-Pacific-Japan team in a groundbreaking collaboration that resulted in in-market digital enhancement.
Through close collaboration, the team enabled a compliant online booking capability in China where standard global tools could not be deployed, overcoming complex regulatory and technical constraints through joint innovation. The result was a scalable model that has been adopted by multiple organisations, reinforcing its significance as a first-of-its-kind achievement in China’s corporate travel ecosystem.
Talking to judge Elizabeth West about digging deep and the importance of collaboration to achieve this accomplishment, Tarun said:
“When it comes to travel, it's all about collaboration and I always see my collaborators as business partners, because if they are not there with you on the designing table, and they are just supposed to obey your asks, they may not deliver the group’s capabilities? So, from my perspective, engage them early. They should be the part of solutioning and designing to become accountable and take responsibility to deliver the result.”
Nowadays wins both Business Travel Innovation Faceoff awards
Nowadays – the AI for corporate meetings - was crowned winner of the APAC Business Travel Innovation Faceoff Judges’ and People’s Choice Awards just six months after ‘doing the double’ at the launch of Business Travel Show America in New York last October.
Business Travel Show Asia Pacific was co-located with The Meetings Show Asia Pacific and the launch of GTM Luxury Asia Pacific at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. All three events will return in 2027 on 21-22 April 2027. Please visit www.businesstravelshowapac.com to find out more.
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