Uncovering the 6 biggest opportunities in corporate travel today

8 min read

The year corporate travel got expensive, the six openings it created, and what the front-runners are doing about them.

Welcome to FACTS 2026

Derek Sadubin · Co-founder and Director, FACTS · Country Manager Australia and New Zealand, GBTA

In November, more than 2,000 of us will gather at ICC Sydney for FACTS 2026, and I cannot wait. This has been a year that asked a lot of everyone in corporate travel, on every side of the industry. That is exactly why coming together matters.

Over two days and five stages we will digest what 2026 has thrown at us, share what is actually working, and think ahead to what 2027 will ask of us next. Just as importantly, we will do it in the same room: reconnecting with old colleagues, meeting new ones, and having some fun along the way, because this industry has never been short of energy or good company. This paper sets the scene for those conversations.

Read it, argue with it, and bring your own version of it to Sydney.

The view from Festive Road

Mike Orchard · General Manager, APAC and Global Operations, Festive Road

Working with travel, meetings and expense programmes around the world, we see the same picture the evidence in this paper describes: a year of real pressure, and underneath it, the biggest opening in a decade for leaders willing to reimagine what their programme and their own role can be.

Programme leaders tell us this directly. In our Pulse 2.0 diagnostic, which has now benchmarked leaders across 12 countries and 13 industries, around three quarters put data, technology and AI in their top three priorities while conceding that readiness lags ambition; almost two thirds name internal capacity, the time, headcount and skills to act, as their single biggest constraint; and only one in three say they have a clear strategy they are executing well.

The encouraging part is what separates the front-runners: leaders who free up time for strategic work run measurably more mature programmes than those consumed by the day to day. Reinvention is not a luxury for this industry. It is the job now, and it is very doable. The findings in this paper reflect that spirit: not simply highlighting challenges but identifying opportunities for leaders to act. We look forward to exploring them with you in Sydney.

The year in one Monday morning

Picture the person running travel and expenses at an Australian company right now. Monday opens with a fare alert: the same route costs more than it did last quarter, again. Mid-morning brings a traveller stranded by disruption on the other side of the world, rebooked at a price that will not amuse Finance. Over lunch, a supplier pitch arrives with AI on every slide. And some time after four, an email from the CFO asks, politely, what the travel program is actually delivering.

None of that is invented. It is what the industry’s own numbers describe. Global business travel spending will reach a record US$1.71 trillion this year while trip numbers barely grow, which means companies everywhere are paying more to travel the same amount. Asia Pacific is carrying the growth, and Australia sits among its largest markets. And when we brought 28 Australian travel buyers together at our buyer-only forums in Melbourne and Sydney this winter, under Chatham House rules with anonymous live polling, two thirds told us that operational work eats 60 per cent or more of their week. Asked for one word to describe their biggest challenge, one answer said it all: time.

You can read all that as a hard year. We read it as the setup for the most interesting stretch this industry has had in a decade. When pressure is this broad, outdated models break, and every place they break is somewhere a buyer or a supplier can move first. What follows is the journey ahead of that person, and everyone like them on either side of the industry: six openings we can see in the market evidence, and how the front-runners are already closing them. They are also the six streams around which we are building FACTS 2026.

Smarter spend

The first problem is money, and the uncomfortable truth is that the high prices are not a phase. The industry’s own forecasts say fares keep climbing this year and will not return to earlier levels, because the drivers are structural: fuel, labour, aircraft supply. The response is already visible in program data: a quiet shift from premium cabins to economy. Trading down is a tactic, though, not a strategy.

The front-runners are doing something more interesting: treating sourcing, payment and policy as one system instead of three departments. Some of the wins are startlingly simple. Booked five weeks ahead, the direct flight is the cheapest option about 70 per cent of the time on busy routes; left to the last week, it becomes a coin toss. Others are about where the money quietly leaks.

The single most-cited frustration among buyers worldwide is travellers finding cheaper hotel rates outside the program, and slow expense reimbursement means employees are effectively lending their employers billions while they wait. The programs getting ahead are not policing travellers harder. They are making the managed channel the easiest, fastest and fairest place to book and pay.

Travel with confidence

While the money got tighter, the world got harder. Geopolitical instability now tops every buyer risk poll, more than half of organisations changed their meetings plans in the first quarter of this year, and about two thirds of travellers admit to being nervous about travelling at all. Borders are digitising too: Europe now records every entry and exit, and Australia is introducing digital passenger cards.

Here is the encouraging part. Disruption is precisely when a managed program earns its keep, and buyers know it: seven in ten say the travel management function becomes more important in a crisis.

The front-runners are spending less on dashboards and more on capability. They test their response plans, keep traveller data clean enough to locate people in minutes, and treat reliable ground transport abroad, the unglamorous weak link, as seriously as flights. When borders go digital, those same disciplines become the difference between a queue and a walk-through.

Putting travellers first

Travel leaders live with a paradox. Travellers overwhelmingly say work trips are good for them, and nine in ten executives say travel powers their most valuable thinking. What wears everyone down is the friction wrapped around the trip: the airport stress, the clunky booking tool, the disruption that costs about a quarter more to fix mid-journey and a week of catch-up work afterwards.

The opportunity here costs less than an upgrade. Executives say what they need to work well on the road is feeling calm, feeling in control and travelling with providers they trust, all things a well-designed program can deliver without touching the fare.

Inclusion has quietly become a differentiator for the same reason: formal support for LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and solo female travellers is falling across the market, so the organisations that hold their standard stand out to exactly the people they most want to keep.

Technology you can trust

Every supplier pitch right now mentions AI. Buyers’ own scorecards tell a different story: most buyers say AI has made little or no difference to their program so far. The honest blocker is not the technology. It is that only about one buyer in ten has a single consolidated view of their program data, and you cannot automate what you cannot see.

What happens next is the part worth leaning into. In new global research, 85 per cent of travel and expense decision-makers expect AI to be handling most T&E decisions within five years, and nearly as many say the value only arrives once travel, payment and finance systems genuinely connect. Our forum buyers were clear about where to start: transactional and operational work first, purchasing later. So the winning sequence is not mysterious. Connect the data, automate the routine, demand proof at every step, and keep a human hand on the override, something nine in ten decision-makers insist on anyway. Trust is not the brake on this technology. It is the feature.

Future-proof partnerships

All of this is happening while the ground moves. Ownership is changing at the biggest travel management companies, distribution is concentrating on fewer platforms, and the economics are shifting visibly here at home as carriers reprice their channels. Around a third of buyers worldwide are re-evaluating their TMC this year, and the stated reason is technology, not service.

Our forum rooms put numbers on where Australia wants to go. Fifteen of 22 buyers want a different travel management model within three years, and among those buying off the shelf today, nearly all plan to shift toward partnering and co-developing, with none planning to move the other way.

Tellingly, their verdict on TMCs was transformation rather than removal: the segment they rate most exposed to AI is one they still want at the core, doing what it does best, with specialists assembled around it. Both rooms ranked speed of adaptation as the thing that future-proofs a travel program and building internal headcount last. The flexibility is expected to come from the ecosystem, which makes choosing partners on financial health, data collaboration and integration quality, rather than reputation or badges, the single most consequential decision on this list.

Your role, reimagined

Which brings the journey back to that Monday calendar, because the real constraint is not budget or technology. Globally, nearly eight in ten travel leaders say they struggle to balance daily operations with strategic work, and only a handful spend most of their time on strategy. Our Australian forum buyers described the same squeeze in person, with the remit widening all the while: most now run meetings as well as travel, and payments, risk and sustainability keep landing on the same desk.

The role that is emerging on the other side of this squeeze looks different and better: less buying of trips, more governing of a connected system.

Two things in the evidence should encourage anyone living the transition. First, the automation wave is finally turning toward the leader’s own workload, sourcing, reporting and analysis, not just the traveller’s booking. Second, the value argument is winnable. Nearly nine in ten decision-makers rate modernising T&E a high priority, CFOs overwhelmingly believe travel matters to growth, and what they are really asking for is proof. Even sustainability, which has slipped down the priority list while the obligations kept growing, folds neatly into the same story: booking earlier is cheaper, more direct and lower-emission, all at once.

See you at FACTS in November

That is the journey: six openings, none of them theoretical, each already being closed somewhere by a buyer or supplier who moved early.

At FACTS 2026, every session is tagged to one of the six streams above, so you can stay with the problems that matter most to your program or roam between them as the agenda unfolds. This paper is the map it is drawn on. Bring your hardest version of these problems to Sydney in November.

This report is built on key 2026 studies by GBTA, SAP Concur, Mastercard/The Harris Poll, Amex GBT, Thrust Carbon, TravelPerk, and Blacklane, with sample sizes as reported by each publisher. Findings from the FACTS buyer-only forums (Melbourne, June; Sydney, August 2026) were gathered under Chatham House rules through live anonymous polling and are reported in aggregate only.

If you’re responsible for booking business travel and events in your business, it’s time to step into the bigger conversations impacting your role. You can apply to attend FACTS 2026 for free as part of the Qualified Buyer Program - learn more and APPLY HERE.

FACTS 2026 will take place at ICC Sydney on 25 - 26 November 2026. Find out more about FACTS 2026 here, and subscribe to FACTS News to receive updates on the events’ agenda and speaker line-up, and earlybird deals.