Leaders from Intrepid, BCD Travel, Allianz Partners and Signature Travel Network turned News Corp’s consumer research into practical lessons for the trade, from rising crisis costs to AI that never says no. Matt Leedham downloads from Beyond Borders in Melbourne.
Travel always goes up. It just doesn’t go up in a straight line.
That was the read from the insightful panel that followed News Corp’s consumer research session at Beyond Borders 2026 in Melbourne.
Moderated by Australian Travel Industry Association (ATIA) director of media and communications LJ Loch, the panel featured ATIA board directors Brett Mitchell, Intrepid Travel managing director ANZ, and Danielle Russom, BCD Travel managing director Australia and Singapore, alongside Allianz Partners senior manager partnerships Amber Kelly and Signature Travel Network ANZ general manager Damian Borg.
Travel is a megatrend
“Travel is a mega trend,” Mitchell said. “I know travel doesn’t always go up in a linear way; it sort of goes up and down, but it does always go up.”
He expects volatility, geopolitical uncertainty and inflation to stick around, but said the way Australians protect their travel budgets “should give us a lot of confidence”.
Borg pointed to ATIA figures showing Australians booked 12.76 million trips in the 12 months to June 2026, up 3.5 per cent. Travellers are trimming experiences, hotel grades or trip length, he said, but not staying home.
Mitchell challenged one finding: rather than young travellers chasing luxury, Intrepid is seeing demand for “experiential accommodation” as demand for camping and hostels declines.
Crisis management is now a cost line
The starkest insight came from Mitchell. “Our fastest-growing P&L line item is the salaries and wages for crisis management,” he said, naming climate change as Intrepid’s number one business risk.
“It’s getting worse,” Mitchell said. “We’re seeing it play out across the globe. It’s happening with more frequency… more volatile, more serious.”
Kelly said 68 per cent of travellers in Allianz’s Northern Hemisphere travel index now factor in extreme weather when making booking decisions, after a challenging European summer of historically low water levels, wildfires, drought and extreme heat.
As such, Borg urged travel businesses to review their fee structures, particularly for disruption-prone destinations, when advisors are effectively rebuilding entire bookings for clients while simultaneously chasing new business.
“There’s no bigger pressure than having to rework past files,” Borg said, pointing to this year’s Middle East disruption and low water on Europe’s rivers.
“Think about the fee structures in your business… as to when your fee structures actually do cover your costs and your effort,” he said.
Insurance as a conversion tool
For Kelly, News Corp’s finding that 67 per cent of travellers are cutting other spending to afford holidays raises the stakes. The more people sacrifice for a trip, the more it matters to protect it.
“Insurance can really play a significant role in actually getting the customer to commit to that trip,” she said.
More than 30 per cent of claims in the nib travel portfolio are made before travellers leave, she said, a point worth making to clients who assume cover only matters once they’re away.
“Travel insurance can be the enabler of the flexibility that customers are looking for,” Kelly said.
Computer says yes
On the topic of AI, Borg delivered the section’s opening line, building on themes from an earlier leaders’ panel.
“I’ve grown up in an age where the computer always said no… Right now, the computer says yes to everything,” he said.
His advice: “If that AI widget chatbot is going to give your customers the answers they’ve been looking for without challenging it, that’s where your value comes in.”
Russom said AI-driven job losses are “probably a long way off”, pointing to research showing travellers still want technology to book but a person on the end when things go wrong.
She also flagged airfares rising 3 to 4 per cent month on month, and the need for the corporate sector to keep its seat at the table on new distribution capability (NDC).
From dashboard to decision
“Too often, you can look at data and create a dashboard and look at it each month and go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ and move on,” Mitchell said. “It’s really about getting disciplined and actually digging into the insights.”
“I think most of us are probably guilty of never actually taking the action,” he added.
He pointed members to ATIA’s new data dashboards, with benchmarking data still to come.
Loch closed the session with the same challenge: “Research only matters if we’re actually translating it into reality, and making the time to do that is really important.”
Beyond Borders opened ATIA’s NTIA weekend, with the National Travel Industry Awards (NTIA) 2026 winners revealed the following night at the sold-out gala at Crown Melbourne’s Palladium.
KARRYON UNPACKS: The most revealing number on stage didn’t come from the research, but from crisis management as one of a major operator’s fastest-growing costs. If disruption is now structural, so is the cost of handling it, and the panel’s subtext was that the trade may need to start pricing for it.
