Flight Centre Survey: Few Clients Plan to Cut Travel Budgets

More than eight in 10 companies expect their business travel spending to increase or remain steady from now until next summer, according to a Flight Centre Travel Group survey of more than 1,200 of its corporate clients.

The State of the Market survey, conducted among FCM Travel and Corporate Traveler clients in June and July, showed 45 percent planned to increase their travel budgets year over year for the 2026 fiscal year, which runs from July 2025 through June 2026. For 9 percent of total respondents, those increases are expected to be more than 20 percent, according to Flight Centre.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said their travel spending would remain steady year over year in the fiscal year, and 8 percent said they planned to reduce spending year over year for the fiscal year. The remaining 9 percent were not certain of their spending trends for the fiscal year.

The results were slightly more bullish than Flight Centre's client survey this time last year, when 42 percent of surveyed clients expected a year-over-year increase in travel spending for the fiscal year.

The trend for respondents in the Americas was similar to the overall trendlines in the survey. Among clients in the region, 47 percent expect travel spending in the fiscal year to be up year over year—9 percent of total respondents saying the increase would be more than 20 percent—and 38 percent expect it to stay the same, while 10 percent expect a spending reduction. Only 5 percent of the Americas respondents were not certain of their spending for the fiscal year.

"With macroeconomic challenges beginning to ease globally, the survey shows that customers have a more optimistic outlook for the year ahead," Flight Centre Travel Group Americas president Charlene Leiss said in a statement. "Corporate travel is increasingly seen as a non-discretionary spend—a critical component of business success."

About a third of total respondents said more than half of their travel spend in the 2026 fiscal year will go toward meetings, events and conferences, an increase from 28 percent who said the same last year. In the Americas, a slightly higher 36 percent of respondents said meetings, events and conferences will make up more than half of their travel budget for the fiscal year.