Budget control and OBT optimisation are UK travel buyers’ top priorities for 2025, pushing full content access, duty of care and sustainable practice down to third, fourth and fifth respectively.

The Institute of Travel Management’s annual priorities survey saw traveller wellbeing and digitalisation/new tech hold firm in sixth and seventh place, with managing supply chain/service issues rising to eighth. Adapting to EU legislation changes and DEI in the workplace were new entries at ninth and tenth.

When asked what their biggest challenges are in 2025, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of respondents named access to full content/NDC while 64 per cent cited balancing traveller behaviour and policy.

“Access to content is the biggest challenge once again this year. Our buyers routinely tell us this is their biggest headache,” said ITM chief executive Scott Davies.

A quarter of buyers said their company’s travel budget is the same in 2025 as it was in 2024, with 36 per cent reporting increased budgets and the same proportion reporting decreased budgets. Four per cent had no visibility into budgets.

Nearly half of buyers (47 per cent) will go to tender with their accommodation programmes in 2025-26, with 25 per cent reviewing their TMC partner/s with a full RFP. Only 16 per cent of buyers expect to review their air, payment/expense or risk management providers. Fewer still (8 per cent) will issue an RFP for ground transport providers.

“The proportion of travel managers doing a full TMC RFP has grown each year since Covid. It’s a busy time for TMCs in a super competitive area,” said Davies.

Buyers reported their most important KPIs when assessing TMCs is their access and ability to service all content, followed equally by cost, online adoption and creative solutions to new problems. “Call/email response times has dropped down to fifth as we’ve moved on from those post-Covid service issues,” commented Davies.

In a corresponding survey of suppliers, content access was also identified as what respondents believed is buyers’ top TMC KPI, while budget control was also identified as a key challenge. “It’s really positive that our suppliers understand buyers really well,” said Davies.

In more good news for travel suppliers, 74 per cent of buyers said their partners understood their priorities and programme well. Though fewer (57 per cent) believe suppliers are open to ‘challenging’ conversations.

Regarding sustainable business travel programmes, 82 per cent of travel managers say the industry needs an agreed standard for measuring how sustainable an air travel programme is, but 69 per cent believe there is no such standard today.

Meanwhile, 18 per cent of respondents say their travel programme allows travellers to book a more sustainable travel option at a higher cost, down from 28 per cent in 2024 and 31 per cent in 2023.

Aligned with that was suppliers’ belief that corporates need to change traveller behaviour to achieve sustainability targets (93 per cent) and also be willing to pay more (95 per cent).