Buyers and suppliers gathered in London on January 22 for the ITM Trends Summit 2025 where ITM revealed the findings of its latest buyer survey.
Here are our 10 key takeaways from the event, where ITM invited experts to discuss the findings and other key industry topics:
1 Buyers are increasingly getting ‘noise’ from their travellers who think they can find better air fares elsewhere, driven by the NDC strategies of some airlines and by the growing number of younger, more tech-savvy travellers. Some buyers are getting 10-15 price challenges a week. “We have a company full of experts. They can all do a better job!” said one buyer.
2 Louise Kilgannon, Head of Outsourcing at Festive Road, suggests buyers make use of expertise within their own organisations.“Build a team around you. Look within your organisation and you’ll find there will be experts in different areas. With developments like AI, for example, it’s impossible to become an expert overnight but there will be someone in your organisation that’s an AI expert.”
3 Scott Davies, CEO of ITM, tells suppliers to be the meeting buyers want, not the one they want to postpone. This means making sure you understand and align objectives and priorities and recognise that each buyer’s needs will be different.
4 Jo-Anne Lloyd, Global Head of Customer Management and Consulting at FCM Travel, warns corporate travel buyers to consider their organisation’s policies on blended travel. If travellers are allowed to add on leisure time to their trips, this can significantly increase the workload and productivity of their TMC and, as a result, there could be increased fees.
5 Sara Andell and Andrew Raimond at Amex GBT reveal that 55% of Gen Z see travel as a perk but almost the same figure (50%) feel guilty about their carbon footprint, which is 10% higher than across all the generations.
6 James Dow, General Manager at Blacklane, asks buyers to be more considerate to their supplier partners when it comes to RFPs, pointing out that at least 50% of the time the chauffeur specialist doesn’t get feedback. “That’s a conversation we need to have,” he says.
7 “Airlines, hotels, TMCs, OBTs – are you a traitor or a faithful?” asks Kerrie Henshaw-Cox, Director Global Procurement at AstraZeneca, in a panel discussion about the challenge of getting access to the right content after the latest ITM buyer survey finds access to full content and the move to NDC is still the biggest challenge for travel buyers this year.
8 Of those buyers who are going to tender in 2025/26, nearly half (47%) are looking to refresh their accommodation programme and 25% are considering changing their TMC.
9 Travel managers should be “cuddling travellers into compliance, not beating them into submission” is great advice shared by Jo-Anne Lloyd at FCM Consulting (given to her by a former boss). Lloyd notes that more corporates are questioning the need for a managed travel programme and urged travel buyers to make it clear that having a programme and policy is vital for mitigation of risk and to reduce the risk of corporate liability.
10 More than 30% of corporate travellers bypass corporate tools, travel agencies and GDS, instead opting for online travel agents, while another 30% book directly through hotel websites and later expense these cost their companies, according to Dimitris Hiotis, Senior Partner, Global Head of Leisure Travel & Transportation at Simon-Kucher.
