2023 U.S.-Booked Air Volume: $483 million
Primary Global Payment Supplier: American Express
Global Travel Risk Management Provider: ISOS
Consolidated Global TMC: BCD Travel
BTN estimates Amazon’s U.S.-booked air travel spend in 2023 again hit $483 million, capturing by a long shot the top spot in BTN’s Corporate Travel 100 annual review of companies spending big on business travel. It is Amazon’s fourth consecutive year atop the list.
The online retail giant was among many tech companies that downsized workforces in 2023. In January, Amazon cut 18,000 employees from the payroll and announced another round of 9,000 reductions in March. While the total reduction was the second-largest in the company’s history, it still was a fraction of the total employee base, which more than doubled during the pandemic, maxing out above 1.6 million in 2021. By year-end 2023 Amazon’s employee count had fallen to just over 1.5 million.
Carbon emissions have come into focus for Amazon. About three-quarters of the company’s emissions fall into Scope 3. That includes business travel emissions, which according to the company’s 2023 sustainability report, is the smallest carbon contributor across several other Scope 3 subcategories. Amazon has committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions across the entire company by 2040.
To this end, Amazon announced in its 2023 sustainability report that it had set climate-related expectations for key suppliers—and going forward it would prioritize working with suppliers committed to reaching their own net zero emissions objectives. Amazon has reduced its overall emissions by 3 percent and its Scope 3 emissions, which include business travel, by 5 percent, year over year.
Amazon has become increasingly opaque regarding the structure of its travel and meetings program and the technology it has in place to execute it. The company hired at least three veteran travel management executives in 2021 and 2022 in what now appears to have been the beginning of a complete overhaul of the program. It changed agencies from CWT to BCD Travel going into 2023. There is speculation in the industry that Amazon has customized a new-entrant technology platform that will advance digitization and personalization within the travel program and streamline travel booking, on-trip servicing and expense processing for Amazon’s tech-savvy traveler base.
And why not? When industry leaders opine about creating “the new business travel experience,” they inevitably point to the Amazon retail shopping experience that leverages digital personas and historic purchasing patterns to inform recommendations. That said, few specifics about the company’s evolving travel program are publicly available.
Amazon reported $575 billion net revenue in 2023, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year. The company in January 2024 abandoned its acquisition of iRobot, which it announced in 2023.