How Travel Management Companies Are Evolving — And What It Means for Your Travel Budget
Business travel has made a solid comeback. But if your approach to managing it hasn't changed since 2019, it's probably costing you more than you realise.
3min read
Published 19 April 2026
Business travel has made a solid comeback. But if your approach to managing it hasn't changed since 2019, it's probably costing you more than you realise.
The organisations getting the most from their travel spend in 2026 aren't just booking more flights - they're being more deliberate about how those flights are managed. Here's what's shifted, and what it means if you're responsible for corporate travel for an Australian SME.
The rules have changed
Australian businesses are travelling frequently again. Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) data puts Australia among the top markets globally for domestic business travel volume. But volume alone doesn't equal value. When adjusted for inflation, our spending still sits below pre-pandemic levels, which means every trip carries more weight than it used to.
For many SMEs, the infrastructure hasn't kept up. Informal booking habits, fragmented suppliers, and manual expense reconciliation were manageable when travel was simpler. Now they generate hidden costs: off-channel bookings outside the preferred program, unused airline credits quietly expiring, and finance teams spending hours unpicking expense reports that should have been clean from the start.
Travel is typically one of the top three costs for an Australian business. It deserves to be managed like one.
What's driving change in corporate travel
A few key shifts are reshaping what businesses actually need from a travel management company (TMC) right now.
- Hybrid work has made trips more purposeful — and more complex. Routine travel has declined; high-stakes travel has increased. Trips are fewer, longer, and often stacked with multiple objectives. Bleisure is now mainstream, with around three in four professionals planning to extend a business trip for personal travel. This has created real policy and duty of care implications that consumer booking tools weren't built to handle.
- Cost pressure is real, but the opportunity is bigger for SMEs. While large enterprises are pulling back on travel budgets, most Australian SMEs expect theirs to grow in 2026. The challenge isn't whether to spend, it's whether you're spending efficiently. Research consistently shows that unmanaged or partially managed travel programs leak 8–12% of spend through off-channel bookings, non-compliant hotels, and missed credits.
- Duty of care has expanded well beyond emergency support. Businesses are now expected to track, assess, and support travellers across the full journey — before departure and during the trip. Every booking made outside the managed channel is a traveller your organisation can't locate or support in a crisis. That's not a risk most businesses have formally costed, but they should.
- Sustainability is becoming operational. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting requirements are filtering down through supply chains, and Scope 3 emissions — which include business travel — are increasingly on the agenda for Australian businesses with international partners or clients. A TMC that can measure and report on travel emissions at a booking level is no longer a nice-to-have.
Why technology alone isn't closing the gap
The corporate travel market has seen a wave of tech-first platforms promising to automate everything from booking to expense reconciliation. Some of them are genuinely good — particularly for high-volume, low-complexity travel.
But the compliance data tells a different story. According to Deloitte's 2025 Corporate Travel Study, only around 42% of bookings across managed corporate programs achieve full travel policy compliance. Roughly half of employees who know their company has a booking tool don't use it consistently.
Technology doesn't solve this. Relationships do.
When travellers have a dedicated, trusted contact — someone who knows their preferences, their schedule, and their organisation's policy — compliance rises, off-channel bookings fall, and the finance team stops chasing receipts. That's the model that consistently outperforms self-serve tools over the full cost of travel, not just the booking fee.
Even the tech-first platforms are coming to the same conclusion. Several have acquired or built out human support layers to plug this gap.
What to look for in a modern TMC
If you're evaluating travel management options, the right questions to ask are less about the platform and more about the partnership:
- How is travel policy enforced at point of booking — not in a policy document, but in the actual booking process?
- What happens to unused airline credits, and who is responsible for tracking and applying them?
- How is invoicing structured — one consolidated invoice coded to cost centres, or multiple supplier invoices for your team to reconcile?
- What does 24/7 support actually look like — a chatbot queue, or a named person who knows your travellers?
The answers separate genuinely capable travel management from a booking service with a nice interface.
The Flight Centre Business Travel difference
At Flight Centre Business Travel, every client gets a dedicated Travel Manager — a single point of human contact who handles the full journey of a business trip, from research and booking through to post-trip reporting and program review.
Your Travel Manager accesses exclusive corporate airfares through our Plus Range programme, applies FlyPlus benefits across all major carriers, HotelsPlus perks across 8,000+ properties, manages ground transport through DrivePlus, and automatically applies loyalty points based on your travellers' stored profiles. Consolidated invoicing, custom spend reporting, real-time traveller tracking, and 24/7 emergency support are standard — not add-ons.
No minimum spend. No lock-in contract. Just a travel program built around your business.
Talk to an Flight Centre Business Travel Travel Manager to see what this looks like in practice, or explore our finance and procurement solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a travel management company actually do?
A TMC manages business travel on behalf of an organisation — from booking flights, hotels, and ground transport to enforcing travel policy, managing duty of care, consolidating spend reporting, and providing emergency support. The best TMCs function as an extension of your team, not just a booking service.
What's the difference between a TMC and an online booking tool?
An online booking tool is self-serve — employees book within defined parameters. A TMC is a managed service where trained travel experts handle bookings, enforce policy, negotiate with suppliers, and provide strategic account management and 24/7 support. The right model depends on the complexity of your program and your internal capacity.
Do SMEs really need a travel management company?
Often more than large enterprises. SMEs face the same duty of care obligations and compliance challenges as big corporates, without the internal resources to manage them. A good TMC gives you access to negotiated rates, dedicated expertise, and program infrastructure — without requiring an in-house travel team to run it. FCBT has no minimum spend requirement and no lock-in contract.
How does a TMC help with duty of care?
By maintaining a complete record of all booked travel, enabling real-time traveller tracking, issuing pre-trip risk assessments, and providing genuine 24/7 emergency support. This only works if bookings go through the managed channel — off-channel bookings create blind spots no technology can fix.