How KEF Holdings discovered 35% overspend in travel with Kitt

The problem - Travel was the second-largest employee expense but there was no way to control it.

KEF Holdings, a 60-person finance firm based in Dubai, was facing a common but costly problem: zero visibility into their substantial annual travel spend. While they had travel policies documented, there was no way to enforce them at the point of booking.

"We can't tell if the travel agent is giving us the best options or prices — there's zero visibility," explains the CFO. The finance team was buried under receipts, trying to piece together what had been spent only after trips were completed. "By the time we understand what we spent, it's already too late to control it."

The company had considered three options: stick with their travel agency (good service, but no control or visibility), let employees book online themselves (choice without oversight), or implement SAP Concur (comprehensive but requiring months and consultants to set up). None felt quite right for a firm their size.

With frequent travel for client projects, conferences, annual leaves, and VIP visits to headquarters, KEF Holdings needed a solution that could provide enterprise-level control without enterprise-level complexity.

The solution - A modern travel platform with in-built policy rules

KEF Holdings implemented Kitt's corporate travel platform, which combines global inventory from Booking.com and Priceline with automated policy controls and UAE-based concierge support. Unlike their previous travel agency arrangement, Kitt enforces policies at the point of booking and provides real-time visibility into spending patterns.

The Kitt team set up customized travel policies for different employee grades, with rules around booking windows, cabin classes, and spending limits. Kitt's platform then dynamically calculates whether each booking complies with these policies and flags violations before the purchase is complete.

"We had policies on paper before, but no one was enforcing them at the point of booking," says the CFO. Now, when an employee searches for flights, Kitt automatically compares options against their policy grade, identifies the cheapest compliant flight, and flags any bookings that exceed limits.

The system tagged 100% of bookings to the correct cost centers, eliminated manual reconciliation work, and provided the finance team with dashboards showing live spend and compliance data. For the first time, the CFO could see policy violations as they happened, not months later during expense reconciliation.

The result - Complete spend visibility reveals huge savings opportunity

The results were eye-opening. Kitt's policy enforcement revealed that the majority of KEF Holdings' bookings violated company travel policies, with significant excess spend per booking. In total, the platform identified a 35% potential overspend relative to what employees should have spent under company guidelines.

The visibility extended beyond individual bookings. Kitt's analytics revealed substantial costs lost to change and cancellation fees — preventable expenses that were previously invisible. The data showed that one department was responsible for nearly half of all excess spending, while a single employee accounted for over a fifth of policy violations.