In today’s unpredictable travel environment, volatile airline schedules and shifting costs make static reimbursement models obsolete. This interview addresses the urgent need for finance teams to abandon rigid annual reviews in favor of real-time visibility. By capturing spend as it happens, companies can seamlessly navigate rapid price fluctuations, mitigate hidden disruption costs, and safeguard corporate budgets while ensuring travelers are never left out of pocket.
Sebastien Marchon is the CEO of Rydoo, a leading global expense management platform. Championing digital transformation in corporate finance, Marchon advocates for real-time technology solutions that simplify the complexities of modern business travel. Under his leadership, Rydoo empowers organizations worldwide to streamline expense processes, adapt to changing markets, and transition from outdated manual workflows to flexible, automated systems.
Key highlights include tackling hidden travel costs, the necessity of real-time budget oversight, utilizing modern automation to ease traveler distress, and shifting toward flexible, data-driven expense policies.
With airline schedules becoming more volatile, how often should companies now be reviewing their “fixed” reimbursement rates to ensure employees aren’t left out of pocket?
Static reimbursement models are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain in today’s unpredictable travel environment. Airfares, fuel surcharges and related travel costs can shift significantly within days, not months, which means that traditional expense review cycles simply can’t keep up anymore.
Businesses need to move away from the idea that travel policies can be reviewed quarterly or annually and still remain effective. Instead, finance teams need real-time visibility into travel spend as it happens, allowing them to quickly identify where employees may be absorbing unexpected costs or where budgets are drifting out of line with current market conditions.
Ultimately, reimbursement should reflect the reality that employees are experiencing in real time, particularly during periods of stress due to travel disruption and price volatility.
Beyond airfare, what are the most common “stealth” expenses employees incur during flight consolidations that finance teams often overlook?
During travel disruption, costs rarely show up as one large expense. Instead, they build up through multiple smaller purchases that can easily slip under the radar. That might include extra lounge or food and drink costs during airport delays, additional taxi journeys, extended hotel stays, rebooking fees across different providers or even roaming charges.
Individually, these costs may seem manageable, but collectively they can create significant budget overruns, particularly when the disruption is impacting multiple employees at once.
What finance teams often overlook is how fragmented these expenses become. Employees are having to make quick decisions under pressure, often across several apps, vendors and payment platforms. Without that real-time oversight of employee spending, it becomes extremely difficult to understand the true financial impact of disruption until long after the trip has ended.
You mentioned the need for real-time visibility; what is the single most important data point a CFO should monitor this summer to protect their travel budget?
Airfares are an obvious one, but in reality, there isn’t a single data point to monitor because travel volatility impacts multiple areas of spend simultaneously. So CFOs’ priority should be ensuring that they have a holistic view over how travel costs are evolving across the entire business.
CFOs need the ability to spot overspend as it emerges, understand what’s driving it, and adapt policies or budgets quickly before isolated issues become larger financial problems.
For example, are certain routes consistently exceeding budget? Are disruption-related claims increasing? Do we need to rethink our travel strategy for this year? Those signals help finance leaders to respond far earlier than traditional month-end reporting allows.
How does modern expense automation specifically reduce the “pressure and distress” for a traveler stranded by a last-minute cancellation?
When travel disruption happens, employees are making highly impactful decisions in stressful situations, whether that’s trying to find a hotel late at night, rebooking cancelled or delayed flights, or paying for meals and alternative routes unexpectedly, all out of their own pocket. The last thing they should be worrying about is whether those expenses will later be rejected or how long reimbursement will take.
Automating expense review helps to remove that uncertainty. Employees can submit expenses instantly through their phones via an app, receive almost instant approvals, and have a clear understanding as to what is covered under company policy while they’re still travelling.
Just as importantly, finance teams can immediately see where disruption is happening and step in to support when it matters most. That creates a far better employee experience during already difficult situations and helps businesses demonstrate that they can protect both their people and the business at the same time.
As fuel costs and geopolitical tensions continue to shift, do you foresee a permanent move away from traditional per diems toward a more “dynamic” expense model?
I think we’re moving towards far more flexible travel and expense frameworks overall. Traditional per diem models were designed for a much simpler, more predictable way of life, but today, prices can change rapidly depending on location, disruption and wider geopolitical situations.
That doesn’t necessarily mean per diems should disappear entirely, as businesses still need consistency and structure. However, companies are increasingly recognising that a lack of flexibility alone can create unnecessary friction for their employees when travelling in unpredictable conditions.
It’s likely that we’ll be seeing more hybrid approaches, where businesses maintain baseline policies but incorporate greater flexibility supported by real-time spend data. The organisations that are willing to adapt to this will be far better positioned to stay on top of travel costs while also maintaining a positive employee experience during periods of uncertainty.
