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Global Business Travel Group, Inc.
Global Business Travel Group runs a business-to-business travel platform that companies use to book and manage travel, expenses, meetings and events for their employees.
Global Business Travel Group, better known as GBTG or simply Global Business Travel, is a business-to-business travel platform. It sells software and services that help companies manage the travel their employees book — flights, hotels, car rentals — along with expenses, meetings and events. Think of it as the behind-the-scenes system a big employer uses so that thousands of workers can book trips without chaos, while finance and travel managers keep an eye on spending and rules.
The company makes money mainly by charging corporate clients for access to its platform and for the services wrapped around it — booking tools, spend controls, reporting, and support for meetings and events. Customers choose it because managing travel across a large workforce is genuinely complicated: you need policy enforcement, negotiated rates, duty-of-care tracking, and clean expense data. Doing that in-house is painful, so they pay a specialist. Global Business Travel competes with other corporate travel management firms and with the big online travel players moving into business booking. Its path to the public markets ran through a blank-check company. It was formerly called Apollo Strategic Growth Capital before combining with the travel business, and its shares traded on the NYSE. Today's sources say those shares no longer trade as a listed stock, so it should not be described as a public company with a live ticker. Reliable current sources do not show a new private owner or acquirer, so the ownership picture is best treated as no longer publicly listed rather than sold to a named buyer.
The business is a bet on corporate travel volume coming back and on companies wanting tighter control over what they spend on trips. When business travel is strong, the platform handles more bookings and the services business hums. When companies cut travel budgets — as they did sharply during the pandemic — the whole model feels it. That swinginess is the core risk, and it is why the company leans on software and recurring service relationships to smooth out the bumps.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Almost 80% of this corporate travel giant's revenue comes from one product line
- 79.2% Travel
- 20.8% Products and other services
Travel bookings account for 79.2% of revenue at Global Business Travel Group, the platform companies use to book and manage employee trips. The rest comes from other products and services. That means the business rises and falls mostly with how much companies spend sending people places. When corporate travel budgets tighten, most of this company's income is exposed. Source: GBTG Revenue Segments & Geographic Breakdown, data from 2025
Timeline
Amex GBT Buys Rosenbluth
In 2003, Amex GBT made a mega deal to buy Rosenbluth International, combining two of the biggest corporate travel agencies in the world. The move tightened its grip on the business of booking trips for companies and gave it far more global reach.
American Express Spins Off the Travel Unit
A decade later, American Express decided it did not want to own its corporate travel division outright. It sold a big stake to an investor group led by Certares, with other backers including Qatar Holdings and BlackRock funds, while keeping half the company. That spin-off created the independent business that would one day become GBTG.
A SPAC Takes Amex GBT Public
In 2022, the company combined with Apollo Strategic Growth Capital, a blank-check company backed by Apollo Global Management. It started trading on the New York Stock Exchange that May, turning the travel management firm into a public company.
Amex GBT Buys Rival CWT
After a long regulatory review, Amex GBT completed its purchase of rival CWT in September 2025. The deal grew its small-and-midsize business by a fifth and aimed at major cost savings over three years. It also helped make 2025 a year of double-digit revenue growth.
Long Lake Takes Amex GBT Private
In late September 2026, Long Lake Management, an AI-focused private-holdings company, bought Amex GBT for six point three billion dollars and took it off the New York Stock Exchange. Long Lake planned to roll its Nexus AI platform across the travel business. It was billed as the world's first AI-focused take-private deal, pairing the travel platform with AI expertise.
Drew Crawley Becomes CEO
Right after the takeover, President Drew Crawley was promoted to CEO. Longtime chief Paul Abbott, who had led the company for seven years, moved to an operating partner role at Long Lake. The change marked the start of a new chapter pairing Amex GBT with Long Lake's applied AI capabilities.