TravelPerk rebrand to tackle ‘shadow work’ crisis in UK

Perk unites travel and spend under one AI native platform

As part of TravelPerk’s rebrand it’s launching a new platform that unites travel and spend management in one seamless, AI-native experience. 

The transition to Perk also marks the next step in the company’s transformation, with a broader mission to eliminate the hidden, time-wasting tasks that drain productivity - from booking trips and filing expenses, to coding invoices and chasing approvals. 

Perk calls these tasks ‘shadow work’: the invisible, non-core work employees do outside their main job. 

New research commissioned by Perk, reveals that shadow work costs businesses $1.7 trillion a year across six major economies - the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands - with £95 billion in the UK alone. 

UK employees lose approximately 9 hours (7 hours average) per week to these tasks, and 12 minutes (11 minutes average) of focus every time they try to switch back to real work. 

Perk’s intelligent platform now automates two thirds (67%) of the most frustrating non-core work, including booking travel for work, filing expenses, managing invoices and organising team events. 

Unlike fragmented solutions, Perk delivers a single, global platform experience that enables companies to set the rules once and have them applied everywhere. 

“More than a decade ago, we started by removing the friction from travelling for work,” says Avi Meir, Perk CEO and Co-Founder. 

“Over time, we realised those small, frustrating tasks people do outside of their core job weren’t just hiding in travel, they were everywhere. To truly solve the problem, we first had to grasp its scale, and the numbers from the research surprised even me. 

“How can a 1000-person company afford to lose around 7,000 hours to shadow work every week? Perk gives companies the fuel they need to make work simpler and give people their time back.” 

Perk's mission to power real work is reinforced by its new Spend Management capability, an AI-native module, which automates the everyday shadow work - from expenses and invoices to card payments - that slow teams down. 

With Perk Pay companies can issue physical cards that simplify spending while keeping every transaction under company control. It centralises oversight of company spending, reduces fraud risk and automates expense reconciliation.  

  Learning from real-world trips, receipts, invoices, and payments, an in-house AI lab powers Perk to continuously learn from anonymised data and automate work faster and more accurately for 10,000 companies worldwide.

Perk is built to deliver results from day one, with deep integrations and an open ecosystem that connects seamlessly with leading ERP, HRIS and expense tools - giving businesses flexibility to streamline operations and simplify workflows. 

As Perk surpasses $300 million in annualized revenue, the company is establishing dual headquarters in Boston and London to reflect its global scale and ambition. 

With two strategic acquisitions in less than a year, Series E financing fuelling innovation, significant AI investment, plus a footprint of over 1,800 employees across 12 global offices, the company is entering a new phase of accelerated growth.