According to Hotel Reservation Service (HRS), the annual growth rate of China’s business travel market was 15.4 percent over the past 17 years, and is expected to grow an additional eight percent this year. 

There is huge growth potential in China’s business travel market, especially as many employees have to do everything on their own, in addition to booking flights and hotels, they also have to gather invoices to be reimbursed.

“In the past, companies wanted the cheapest airline tickets and hotel fees. But they didn't know what was the cheapest. Was it the same-day ticket or the ticket you order three days earlier, or five days earlier? It's difficult for companies to know without a professional management adviser,” said Fang Jiqin, the CEO of CTRIP Corporate Travel.

Companies are now taking advantage of the latest technology to help simplify the entire process for companies. 

“The latest AI payment systems are going to simplify everything to paperless seamless experience for our travelers,” said Kimi Jiang, vice president of Asia Pacific, HRS. “They just need to book the hotel, and then do the check in and do the check out. And it's done. The complicated process is leveraging AI tech through the company account directly to the hotel, and the hotel will put together the VAT fapiao for companies once a month.”

As China continues to open up, the country's foreign investment in the first quarter reached 25.5 billion US dollars, up 24 percent from a year ago, underlining the huge market for corporate travel from Chinese companies. Jiang estimates that the Belt and Road regions will be one of the major contributors to China's business travel over the next few years.