The CTM saga has moved beyond accounting, ethics and even reputation. For its customers, it has become a question of supplier resilience and business continuity.
CTM has now substantially quantified the cost of its historic UK problems. Customers associated with £102 million of the previously identified £118 million liability have made binding settlement offers requiring CTM to refund £87 million.
£11 million has already been paid, with another £76 million to be paid progressively through to 30 September 2027. Another £16 million remains under negotiation. CTM has separately agreed payments totalling £12 million concerning more recent UK contractual issues.
That is progress. It removes considerable uncertainty, but it also tells customers something important about CTM’s financial position.
CTM previously said the refunds needed to be spread over an extended period aligned with its liquidity and future anticipated earnings, and then said they would be funded through existing cash, future operating cash flows and lenders. That’s every possible source: cash, income and borrowing.
CTM’s obligation to repay does not disappear if profits fall, but its ability to comfortably fund those payments clearly becomes more difficult if revenue, margins or customer retention deteriorate.
More bluntly, it has to avoid substantial account and income loss, make the agreed payments and repay the new loans.
That creates an uncomfortable circularity. CTM needs customers to remain, because their business generates the earnings CTM intends to use to meet its remediation obligations. It has to keep going to keep going.
This is not a prediction that CTM will fail. It is a reason why CTM clients should now actively manage the risk that something changes.
What should clients watch?
First: Watch the loans and the lenders
The next financing announcement might be more important than almost anything CTM says about client retention. The details really matter here. Buyers should not only look at the size of the debts, but also the maturity dates, security, covenant requirements and how much money is actually left for normal TMC operations after repayments. If funding is heavily conditional, tightly covenanted or short-term, that matters.
How to monitor this?
Subscribe to CTM ASX announcements and CTM Investor Centre alerts. Read every announcement. Also, formally ask CTM to confirm total debt, facilities drawn/available, covenant compliance, waivers, repayment dates and liquidity headroom. Do not rely only on public statements.
Second: Watch the accounts
CTM’s FY25 audited financial statements remain outstanding, and its shares remain suspended. ASX’s official long-term suspension notice gives CTM a 29 August 2026 deadline for its oldest outstanding report. That’s this Saturday! There is also a separate 26 August 2027 deadline to meet ASX requirements to return to trading.
When the accounts finally do appear, clients should look beyond EBITDA. Examine cash, net debt, operating cash generation, creditor balances, provisions, contingent liabilities, auditor comments, going-concern wording, covenant disclosures and further revenue reversals or impairments.
How to monitor this?
Watch the ASX CTM announcements page for the audited FY25 accounts and subsequent financial reports. When released, have your finance department review it, focusing on cash, operating cash flow, net debt, provisions, covenant headroom and auditor qualifications/emphasis-of-matter and going-concern language given the outgoings. These are all important numbers. It’s no longer just about profit.
Third: Watch customer retention
But don’t simply accept the headline percentage. CTM has reported retention above 97 percent.
What matters now is whether major, profitable clients renew, whether contracts are being retained on unchanged commercial terms, and whether CTM is having to sacrifice margin to preserve revenue.
Evidence already shows procurement authorities are paying attention. New Zealand Government Procurement suspended CTM from tendering for new work through its All-of- Government travel panel from 31 July, although existing arrangements were not automatically terminated.
How to monitor this?
Track major tender results and contract awards, particularly government accounts, through AusTender, state procurement sites, NZ GETS, UK Contracts Finder/Find a Tender and industry media.
Set alerts for “Corporate Travel Management”, “CTM” and contract/renewal/tender. Also ask CTM directly for the number and value of significant accounts lost, renewed and repriced, rather than accepting the headline historic 97 percent retention figure. Its largest account is bigger than a thousand small accounts.
Fourth: Watch the operation itself
Clients may see warning signs before shareholders do.
Monitor unexplained account-management turnover, declining consultant availability, slower response times, deterioration in after-hours service, missed SLAs, increased booking errors, refund delays, unusual pressure around payment terms, supplier complaints, changes in ticketing processes and deterioration in reporting.
Pay particular attention to airline ticketing and unused credits. If a TMC ever experiences pressure with airlines, GDSs, card providers or other suppliers, seemingly small operational problems can become very large problems remarkably quickly.
CTM has also announced a five-year global partnership with Amadeus. That may ultimately be positive, but clients should establish exactly when any GDS, mid-office, profile, reporting or online-booking migrations affect their account and insist on appropriate testing and transition controls.
How to monitor this?
Create a monthly CTM risk dashboard from your own account data. Track consultant/staff changes, call response and abandonment times, after-hours performance, booking errors, refunds outstanding, unused-ticket recovery, SLA failures, complaints and reporting delays. Get this in a weekly report from CTM if you don’t already have it, preferably as primary data online.
Ask travellers and bookers whether service is changing. At this point, this should also be done weekly. Maybe send out an invitation to respond about several parameters every Monday. Any sudden change in ticketing, payment procedures, airline access, GDS processes or supplier arrangements should be escalated immediately and explained in writing by CTM.
What should clients do from now?
The answer is not necessarily to terminate CTM tomorrow. Abruptly moving a large travel program can itself create substantial risk. Instead, every sizeable CTM customer should quietly build a workable Plan B.
Start by identifying what would actually have to move if CTM could not provide normal service or if your organisation decided to terminate.
That means documenting traveller profiles, unused air tickets and credits, negotiated airline and hotel arrangements, booking-tool configurations, approval structures, cost centres, reporting feeds, payment arrangements, traveller tracking, VIP processes, emergency services and open bookings.
Make sure your organisation, rather than solely CTM, has current copies of essential travel data.
Then examine the contract. Understand termination rights, notice periods, transition assistance, data ownership and portability, unused-ticket ownership, contractual protections, parent guarantees if any, disaster-recovery obligations and what happens to bookings already made if the agreement ends.
Next, identify alternative fulfilment capacity. That need not mean running a complete tender immediately. A confidential market sounding with two or three credible TMCs can establish who could take the account, how quickly, what technology changes would be necessary and whether emergency interim servicing is possible.
For particularly travel-dependent organisations, I would go further and develop a Travel Criticality Replacement Plan: a documented procedure that can move essential travellers to an alternative booking and assistance service within days, rather than starting procurement from scratch during a crisis.
Government customers have an additional complication: CTM is the sole supplier for much of the Australian public sector. Government travel covers substantial, critical areas of operation.
Another thing to note about public sector travel is that most accounts are large to very large. Losing clients here could severely impact CTM’s capacity to meet future repayment and operational requirements. That should make procurement managers more vigilant, not less.
The point is not to speculate about CTM collapsing. It is exactly the opposite. Good procurement does not wait to discover whether the worst case happens.
CTM might successfully complete its financing, publish satisfactory audited accounts, make every remediation payment and emerge as a financially stronger and better-governed company. Let’s hope so. Its current management deserves the opportunity to demonstrate that, but clients do not have to bet their travellers on that outcome.
The appropriate response now is simple: watch the finances, watch the operation, protect your data, understand your exit rights, identify an alternative supplier and have a transition plan ready. Oh, and minimise things owing to you.
Minimise your travel debt exposure
Immediately identify and independently record the value of all your issued future tickets, unused tickets/airline credits, outstanding refunds and bookings not yet ticketed. Ask for a report and get online access to the raw data file that covers this.
Properly issued tickets and airline-held credits should generally survive a TMC failure because the value sits with the airline. However, accessing, transferring or using those credits could become difficult if CTM suddenly ceased servicing your account.
The greater financial risk is money still passing through CTM, particularly refunds received from airlines but not yet returned to you, or payments made for bookings not yet ticketed.
It’s best to download and regularly reconcile the unused ticket and refund registers, keep ticket numbers and expiry details independently, and confirm with major airlines that credits can be transferred to a replacement TMC if needed. It’s a bit of work, but in these circumstances it’s worth it.
If nothing goes wrong, little has been expended, and nothing has been lost. If something does, everything important has been prepared.
About the author
Tony O’Connor is a fully independent corporate travel management consultant, having operated Butler Caroye for nearly thirty years and, more recently, Airocheck since 2017. Over that time, he has advised or run many of the largest travel procurement and review projects in the region, as well as countless projects for buyers large and small. He specialises across the travel category in tendering, assessment, auditing, benchmarking, analysis and supply chain financial advice. An important distinction is that he works with buyers ONLY. He can be contacted at 0409 944 911 and toc@butlercaroye.com.au
