The return. The rebound. Back to business. Whatever you call it, that is what 2022 represented for many in the business travel industry.  Covid was “over” so everyone could get back to doing what they do best – managing travel for corporate clients and making the wheels of global business run smoothly.

That was the plan anyway. Vladimir Putin had other ideas and his euphemistic “special military operation” in Ukraine proved to be another blow for the industry. Yet TMCs are known for their resilience and, if anything, Covid has made them even more responsive when it comes to keeping things moving when global events threaten to throw them off course. 

Getting back to business is easy to say but harder to do. Many good people have left the travel industry after they were considered surplus to requirements during the pandemic. Many have come back, but not all, and recruiting experienced people has become one of the sector’s biggest problems. TMCs have turned to technology to fill some of the gaps but service levels were hit, leaving many corporates unhappy and prompting them to consider going out to tender. Whether other TMCs could actually make things better when they were in the same position was not necessarily a given.

This annual report from Business Travel News Europe is compiled from information supplied from travel management companies during a three-month period from March to May each year. The information is gathered through a comprehensive questionnaire that we review each year for its relevance.

With some semblance of normality, this year’s ranking – more comprehensive than ever – returns to our previous methodology after two years in which we allowed TMCs to provide aggregated sales figures for the duration of the pandemic rather than just the previous year.

Once again, we thank all of those TMCs for taking the time to complete our detailed questionnaire. This year for the first time, we added questions on awards and accreditations as well as environmental and diversity and inclusion policies. We know this can be quite an information-gathering effort on behalf of many of those listed but we are truly appreciative and we believe it makes Europe’s Leading TMCs a more valuable resource than ever.

Within this report you will find rankings for the five key markets in Europe – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. We have also analysed those entries to create a ranking of the top multinational TMCs in Europe. In addition, we also include a ranking of the specialist agency networks and consortia operating within the continent.

Every year, despite encouragement and persuasion, some TMCs are unwilling to supply us answers to every question for this supplement, including the key financial statistics that we use to rank TMCs within their respective markets. A few years ago we 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 we have to make estimates of some key figures, notably gross sales, rather like the compilers of the Sunday Times Rich List do. These entries are clearly marked.

We make these estimates as rigorous as possible. This involves looking at the company registers in all of the countries in the report, analysing air spend figures from IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plan, and taking note of public statements about changes in client spend and turnover in the media across Europe. We also use historic ratios of turnover to gross sales to help make estimates, together with staffing levels. It is also worth noting that to compare figures we have used average annual exchange rates between the key currencies. While it would be ideal to have everyone provide audited figures, we believe this is the best pragmatic answer.

We believe that the figures we use reflect the state of the market. However, we recognise that the ranking may not completely reflect the true state of it. We therefore encourage all TMCs in the ranking, as well as those who are not included and who believe they should be, to share their details with us so they can be included in future editions.

• Europe’s Leading TMCs 2023 was compiled and written by Mark Frary – contact him at mfrary@thebtngroup.com – together with input from Alexandre Veau, partner at Impact Consultants, whose support was greatly appreciated.