Spanish executives planning trips within their own country are now running into the same obstacles that leisure tourists face at the height of summer. According to the Global Business Travel Survey 2026 released today by SAP Concur, 77 % of Spanish business travellers say their journeys have already been disrupted by mass tourism. Higher hotel prices, scarce accommodation in city centres and extended transfer times were the most common complaints. The knock-on effects go beyond inconvenience. Thirty-eight per cent of corporate travel managers told researchers that employee reluctance to travel is now a top threat to their mobility programmes, ahead of geopolitical risk and visa issues. Rising costs are forcing companies to alter itineraries, shift meetings online or schedule trips during shoulder seasons—strategies that add complexity to travel planning and may weaken client relationships. Spanish firms are also wrestling with a technology gap. Two-thirds of respondents admit using unapproved artificial-intelligence tools—so-called “shadow AI”—to book or manage travel because official platforms are too slow to adapt. That raises compliance and data-protection headaches at the very moment when finance departments are tightening the screws on expense audits. Nearly half (47 %) of travellers confessed to at least one breach of company policy in the past year.
![Overtourism Hits 77 % of Spain’s Business Travellers, SAP Concur Survey Warns]()
For managers whose teams also make frequent international hops—or who host partners from abroad—visa and document formalities add yet another layer of friction. This is where VisaHQ’s Spain portal comes in: its online tools consolidate the latest entry requirements, expedite visa applications and even flag passport expirations, allowing travel departments to offload paperwork and focus on the cost, safety and sustainability challenges outlined in this report.
What can companies do? Travel-management experts advise locking in hotel contracts months earlier, shifting meetings to less-congested secondary cities such as Zaragoza or Valencia, and investing in dynamic AI-based booking engines that surface compliant options automatically. They also urge HR departments to coordinate with risk teams so that emergency-evacuation plans cover peak-season crowd scenarios as well as traditional security threats. In the longer term, the report argues, cities and regions need to diversify tourism flows by promoting off-season conferences and capping cruise-ship arrivals—measures that would benefit both residents and the corporate sector. Until then, Spain’s celebrated visitor boom is poised to remain a two-edged sword for the country’s globally mobile workforce.
For managers whose teams also make frequent international hops—or who host partners from abroad—visa and document formalities add yet another layer of friction. This is where VisaHQ’s Spain portal comes in: its online tools consolidate the latest entry requirements, expedite visa applications and even flag passport expirations, allowing travel departments to offload paperwork and focus on the cost, safety and sustainability challenges outlined in this report.
What can companies do? Travel-management experts advise locking in hotel contracts months earlier, shifting meetings to less-congested secondary cities such as Zaragoza or Valencia, and investing in dynamic AI-based booking engines that surface compliant options automatically. They also urge HR departments to coordinate with risk teams so that emergency-evacuation plans cover peak-season crowd scenarios as well as traditional security threats. In the longer term, the report argues, cities and regions need to diversify tourism flows by promoting off-season conferences and capping cruise-ship arrivals—measures that would benefit both residents and the corporate sector. Until then, Spain’s celebrated visitor boom is poised to remain a two-edged sword for the country’s globally mobile workforce.
