A new international survey of 300 travel industry executives, conducted by FT Longitude — a division of the Financial Times — in partnership with WEX, a global leader in intelligent payment solutions, paints a picture of an industry exposed to geopolitical volatility and compressing performance forecasts. At the same time, the findings reveal notable resilience, with many travel intermediaries adopting modernized payment strategies to withstand external pressures and meet their 2026 growth expectations.

The study, titled “Avoiding Payment Jet Lag,” offers comprehensive insight into how travel intermediaries are optimizing their back-office financial operations. These intermediaries — the online travel agencies, corporate travel management companies, and wholesale distributors that book and settle travel on behalf of customers — sit at the center of the industry’s payment chain, collecting funds from travelers while paying airlines, hotels, and other suppliers, often across borders and currencies. Although 74% of travel intermediaries still forecast growth this year — even as conflict in the Middle East has lowered initial expectations — the research documents a widespread push to modernize legacy payment systems. Industry leaders regard these upgrades as critical, noting that system limitations during market disruptions can damage customer loyalty (79%) and constrain an organization’s ability to deliver crucial 24/7 payment support (57%) to travelers.

Despite these backend pressures, travel leaders see a clear path forward. Moving away from passive, legacy financial systems is viewed as a business mandate, with 59% of executives predicting that long-term enterprise growth will come directly from proactively innovating their corporate payment strategies.

“Operational resilience in 2026 depends as much on an organization’s digital payment architecture as it does on traditional infrastructure and frontline logistics,” said Jason Hancock, managing director of Global Travel at WEX. “The report highlights how travel intermediaries are no longer just playing defense against escalating market volatility or supplier insolvencies. Instead, they are transforming their own modern payment architecture into proactive tools for risk protection, cash flow flexibility, and sustainable growth.”

Additional findings from the global survey include:

Premium travel services can help stabilize margins. Despite adverse events, consumer spending remains fairly resilient, with 61% of respondents reporting steady demand. Luxury travel, in particular, can offer a reliable path to near-term growth: 86% of executives say premium packages stabilize their margins during times of crisis.

The chargeback security imperative. Currently, 84% of executives say the risk of financial loss from supplier insolvency feels higher than it did just 12 months ago, while 82% of leaders state that better frameworks for chargebacks could save their organizations money by improving supplier payment recovery rates. The concern reflects a structural feature of the sector: travel is typically sold and paid for before it is consumed, so intermediaries manage both supplier payments and customer refunds when a supplier fails.

The dawn of agentic automation. Travel intermediaries are leaning into automation to boost day-to-day efficiency. The survey found that 59% of travel organizations plan to scale AI-driven tools for customer assistance, and 54% intend to deploy agentic AI — systems designed to carry out multi-step tasks with a degree of autonomy — for discovery efforts, all while maintaining centralized human control over booking decisions.

Drawing on decades of expertise managing complex B2B data and financial flows, WEX helps travel organizations implement flexible, API-driven payment platforms, integrated automated data networks, and secure virtual card infrastructure — payment instruments that generate limited-use card numbers and are already widely used for supplier settlement in travel’s B2B payments. According to the company, transitioning to these modern frameworks helps insulate travel leaders from their three top-cited mid-term risks — supplier insolvency, volatile currency exchange rates, and sophisticated payment fraud — while building the structural flexibility required to unlock new revenue streams.