Flight Centre Travel Group, owner of travel management company
brands FCM and Corporate Traveler, in its latest earnings announcement cited
scale efficiencies from artificial intelligence as key to “accelerated” earnings
growth in the latter half of 2025. The company said it was well positioned to
capture potential fallout from the CWT-Amex GBT merger and pointed to an
especially active request for proposal environment in the Australia market in
the wake of financial challenges for its largest Australian rival Corporate
Travel Management.
The Australia-based company said that its corporate travel
brands achieved record total transactional value of A$6.3 billion,
during the six months through Dec. 31, 2025, which was an increase of 6 percent
on the same period in 2024.
Flight Centre’s corporate business also “accelerated”
earnings growth, with an underlying pre-tax profit of A$114.6 million, up from
A$95.2 million in the prior year.
Graham Turner, Flight Centre’s managing director, said in a
statement: “Our results reflect our global model’s strength and our brands’
enduring value as we continue to evolve.
“Despite challenging conditions, demand remains resilient
and we’re using our scale, people and technology to capture a growing market.”
In an earnings call, Turner added that its corporate travel
business “continues to outperform the market.” He highlighted operational “productivity
gains” achieved through the increased use of AI, as well as its expansion into
areas such as payments, meetings and events, and consulting.
“In corporate, AI is already handling millions of inquiries
and supporting more consistent service delivery across the group,” said Turner.
Chris Galanty, Flight Centre Travel Group’s global corporate CEO, also emphasized
“streamlined processes” at its TMCs, which have helped to increase transaction
value per employee by nearly 20 percent in the past two years.
“Our profit growth has comfortably exceeded our
transaction value growth—clear evidence we're achieving genuine scale
efficiencies,” added Galanty. “This isn't about working people harder.
It's about working smarter through AI-enabled tools and streamlined processes
that free our consultants to focus on complex, high-value client work.”
Galanty said that its corporate brands in Asia had now
returned to profitability, while Corporate Traveler in the U.S. saw TTV increase
by 13 percent year-on-year “despite challenging local market conditions,”
during the second half of 2025.
The company added that its corporate division had “secured a
strong account pipeline,” including FCM winning around A$600 million in
contracts during the half-year. Flight Centre said it was also “well positioned
to benefit from ongoing industry consolidation.”
Flight Centre executives were also asked during the earnings
call about the impact of the “challenges” currently facing one of Flight
Centre’s Australia-based competitors—referring to the problems faced by
Corporate Travel Management over major accounting discrepancies, which led to
the departure of CTM founder
Jamie Pherous earlier this month.
Galanty responded: “I suspect that there may be some
opportunities still to come, certainly in the Australian market. We don’t
really come up against them very much in North America or Europe.”
Melissa Elf, who is FCM’s global managing director, added: “We’re
not really seeing it in a global space, but certainly in Australia we’re
starting to see a lot more RFP activity, a lot more enquiries and seeing a bit
of conversion. There’s definitely a heightened activity over the past six
months or so.”
Flight Centre Travel Group, which also includes a
substantial leisure travel division, recorded a 7 percent year-on-year rise in
TTV to A$12.5 billion during the six-month period, while underlying profit
before tax increased by 4 percent to A$124.6 million.