Just when you think you have seen it all in the world of travel management companies, something comes along to shake the sector up again.

These upheavals came from three main areas in 2025: geopolitics, consolidation and artificial intelligence.

Donald Trump was inaugurated as president for a second term in January 2025. No sooner had he entered the White House than he started dismantling the international world order that has endured since the end of World War II. He unveiled trade tariffs as soon as he took office. Liberation Day, on 2 April 2025, saw tariffs imposed on most countries in a bid to address the balance of payments issue. Tariffs yoyo-ed over the course of the year and reached 145 per cent against Chinese imports at one point. Trump’s supporters were ecstatic but economists were not so convinced. The Tax Foundation estimates that the tariffs raised $38 billion in net tax revenue in 2025 and reduced the trade balance by only $2.1 billion, a tiny sum in relation to the size of the economy.

International trade is a vital driver of business travel and anything that disrupts it cannot be a good thing.

The ongoing Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East also reshaped travel patterns and increased uncertainty. Airlines are forced to rethink routes as a result, driving costs higher.

At all levels of the TMC sector, consolidation has grown apace. The biggest part of this involves the two biggest TMCs – American Express GBT and CWT – and the waving through of their merger has reshaped the business travel sector in all of the countries in our rankings.

Some TMCs were also dipping their toes in to the waters of AI last year but now many have plunged headfirst into the ocean in a bid to improve efficiencies, serve their corporate customers better and provide more personalised service.

The extensive research carried out for the Business Travel News Europe’s Leading Travel Management Companies shows that against this uncertain backdrop, TMCs are offering new products and service and building new alliances.

METHODOLOGY

The annual Business Travel News Europe Leading Travel Management Companies report is compiled from information supplied from travel management companies during the period from March to June each year. The information is gathered through a comprehensive questionnaire that is review annually for relevance.

Last year BTN Europe moved to a new data management platform in order to be able to slice and dice the information in more ways than ever before and used it to update the information this year. It has helped make the data collection and editing smoother.

BTN Europe would like to thank all the TMCs that completed the questionnaire and answered follow-up questions. The senior executives who have completed the questionnaire will know that BTN researchers requests comprehensive information on their activities, rankings from technology accreditations, ESG policies and whether they prefer to develop technology in-house or work with third-party providers. The 2026 Leading TMCs survey also queried information on company structure and related companies for the first time.

Leading TMC rankings cover the seven key markets in Europe – Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Spain and the UK. BTN Europe also analysed those entries to create a ranking of the top TMCs across the whole of Europe. Also included is a ranking of the specialist agency networks and consortia.

The Leading TMCs report has grown substantially since it first appeared in 1997, when it featured 100 business travel agencies and only covered the UK. This year the ranking is more comprehensive than ever, covering more TMCs in more countries. It is a hugely popular resource for travel managers and others in the business travel sector throughout the UK and Europe.

As always, the ranking comes with a health warning. Some TMCs are unwilling to supply answers to every question for this ranking, including the key financial statistic that we use to rank TMCs – the gross business travel sales figure. A few years ago BTN Europe took the decision to include all of the major TMCs in this ranking, regardless of whether they supplied the necessary information. This means that for some TMCs, the research team make estimates of certain key figures, notably the gross sales figure, rather like the compilers of the Sunday Times Rich List do. These instances are clearly marked with an asterisk on certain pages or with the callout (estimated) on others.

BTN Europe make these estimates as rigorous as possible. The process involves reviewing company registers in all of the countries in the report and scouring the trade and business press in countries across Europe to find statements by TMC executives about their organisation’s sales volumes. BTN Europe also use historic ratios of revenue to gross sales and past declarations of business to leisure ratios to make estimates. To compare figures, the research team use average annual exchange rates between the key currencies.

While it would be ideal to have everyone provide audited figures, BTN Europe holds that using informed estimates is the best pragmatic answer.

The figures used reflect the state of the market. However, all TMCs in the ranking, as well as those who are not included and who believe they should be, are encouraged to share their details so they can be included in future editions. Email [email protected].

As a final note, BTN Europe took the decision this year to exclude a significant provider of TMC services, CTM, due to financial uncertainties surrounding overcharges particularly in the UK market. BTN Europe was not able to connect with CTM on any financial details and with public reporting suspended since August, the unfortunate reality is that BTN Europe researchers had no information upon which to make an estimate. CTM is scheduled to release its overall financial results by 30 June.

BTN Europe in 2026 again worked with an advisory board for the production of the Leading TMCs. This is to ensure voices from all parts of the industry contribute to the questionnaire, the overall direction ranking of the research and to provide expert analysis of the findings.

Business Travel News Europe would like to thank Alexandre Veau of Impact Consultants in France, Tom Drexler and Jens Vongehr of The Travel Consulting Group in Germany, Rosemarie Caglia of Travel for Business in Italy, Odete Pimenta da Silva, managing director of the Netherlands Association for Travel Management, Marcel Forns of GEBTA in Spain, Fredrik Hermelin, general manager of the Swedish Business Travel Association and Clive Wratten of The Business Travel Association and Deborah Potts of Summit Advisory in the UK for their input into this research.