American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) has launched a freemium digital consulting platform designed to help small and midsize businesses optimise their travel spend and performance without the cost of traditional advisory services.
The platform, called Toolbox, targets SMEs where travel is typically managed by employees with broader responsibilities and limited resources. “A lot of times, travel is a small component of what they do,” said Dan Beauchamp, VP of consulting at Amex GBT. “They’re being asked to do more with less… but travel is a catalyst for growth. Yet they rarely, if ever, have the budget for strategic consulting.”
AI-powered assessment and benchmarking
The new platform begins with a diagnostic survey that gauges the maturity of a company’s travel programme. Using AI-driven analysis, Toolbox generates a score and then recommends tailored content, training resources and benchmarking dashboards derived from aggregated SME client data across the Amex GBT network. Data is refreshed monthly, enabling companies to track performance over time and re-assess their results as their programmes evolve.
The freemium version of Toolbox includes:
• Programme scoring and benchmarking
• AI-generated insights for improvement
• Access to consultancy best-practice resources
• Reviewable assessment history
• Guidance across hotel, air, car rental, and sustainability strategies
A premium “pro” subscription tier provides deeper analytics and tailored consulting recommendations.
The tool is currently available to SMEs using Amex GBT’s Select solution. However, the company has confirmed plans to extend access to other SME clients, including those using Egencia.
A travel policy builder feature will be particularly valuable to smaller firms seeking stronger spend governance as business travel remains subject to stricter approval policies post-pandemic.
Amex GBT has been doubling down on the SME segment since post-pandemic demand initially drove strong growth in 2023, particularly through its Neo and Egencia platforms. However, growth has since slowed to around 2% year-on-year in 2024 and 2025 as higher prices and weaker macroeconomic conditions led SMEs to pull back on non-essential spend.
To reignite momentum, the company has appointed new leadership focused specifically on SME growth and released research showing “high-growth SMEs” invest more frequently in business travel than slower-scaling competitors.
When asked if Toolbox was primarily intended to act as a sales funnel, Beauchamp said the move was less about driving direct consulting revenue and more about deepening retention. “It really is about how we can help elevate our SME travel programmes and get incremental stickiness and daylight between our SME offering and others,” he said.
As SME travel management becomes increasingly self-serve and digitally enabled, Amex GBT’s freemium model appears designed to build loyalty by offering smaller firms the type of strategic insights previously reserved for larger corporates — potentially creating more informed buyers who are more likely to upscale into premium services over time.