Travel is one of the most financially solid sectors in Belgium 94.9% Healthy: Why Belgian Travel Companies Are Thriving

94.9% of Belgian travel companies are rated financially healthy. According to BTC, that places the sector among the top three best-performing in the Belgian economy; outperforming most industries people would assume are sturdier.

This surprises people. Travel carries a reputation for fragility: thin margins, weather-dependent demand, volatile geopolitics, and the memory of COVID shutting the industry overnight.

The data tells a different story, especially against what the rest of the economy was doing.

What ‘financially healthy’ actually means

The figures come from Graydon’s Shock Resistance Report and 9-grid model, which BTC publishes each year in its Q1 report. The model separates businesses along two axes, financial health and shock resistance, and that distinction is what makes the numbers worth reading closely.

48.6% of Belgian travel companies are both healthy and shock-resistant. These businesses can absorb a bad year (a lost season, a geopolitical disruption, a supplier collapse) without going under. Nearly half the sector sits in that strongest category.

49.2% are rated shock-resistant on the resistance axis, and 81% sit in the “safe” zone overall. Not every safe-zone company is shock-resistant, but all are operating on sound fundamentals.

Travel is not a sector living on the edge. It spent the post-COVID years getting its finances in order, and the numbers show it.

The contrast with the wider economy

The travel sector’s stability stands out sharply against the Belgian backdrop. In 2023, a record 6,324 companies went bankrupt in Flanders, and across Belgium the total rose to 10,771, back to pre-COVID levels after two artificially quiet pandemic years. Construction and hospitality were the hardest-hit sectors nationally. Against that, travel held its place in the top tier of financial health.

The gap is just as clear in the most recent economy-wide data. Graydon’s December 2025 reading of all Belgian SMEs (up to 49 employees) found that 38.5% sat in the strongest segment. That is, pre-crisis healthy and still holding reserves after the economic shock. On the other hand 33.6% fell into the bottom tier, needing fresh capital to survive.

Travel’s 48.6% both-healthy-and-shock-resistant comfortably clears that all-sector baseline. (These SME figures cover the whole economy, not travel specifically, but they show the benchmark the sector is being measured against.)

The resilience shows up in sector-specific failure data too. Belgium’s travel guarantee fund, Garantiefonds Reizen, which covers affiliated agencies and operators against insolvency, has reported more than 700 days without a claim: no failures, no stranded travellers.

The last major Belgian travel insolvency it handled at scale was the Thomas Cook collapse in September 2019. (The figure reflects the fund’s own affiliated network rather than an independent sector-wide audit, but it is a meaningful signal of stability.)

How the sector held its margins

The resilience isn’t accidental. BTC attributes it to three shifts.

• Consumers are now spending more per person, and that spending has outpaced price increases.

• Agencies have moved from pure reselling toward organising their own product, which hands them direct control over margins.

• Transparent service fees have become standard practice, with customers increasingly accepting them. That last point matters against the backdrop of the revised Package Travel Directive: fees charged transparently sit outside the packages the directive governs. We will tackle this subject in a future article.

BTC’s own reading of the market explains why this happened. The sector has moved from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market under the pressure of falling commissions. That pressure pushed agencies toward proper organisation and margin control.

The businesses that adapted are running tighter operations than before. The consolidation didn’t weaken the sector; it concentrated strength in the operators who adapted.

The benchmark anchoring all of this: the sector’s average gross margin must reach 12.53% to break even. This is the share of total turnover an agency has to retain just to cover fixed costs, before paying anyone.

On a €1,000 booking, that means keeping at least €125. Below that line, the business runs at a loss no matter how busy it feels. With commissions falling, BTC notes that new business models, better-margin products, and service fees are no longer optional for the companies concerned.

A regional note worth keeping in mind

Flanders runs slightly ahead of Wallonia, and the gap is consistent across readings.

In Flanders, 96% of companies are financially healthy, 48.7% are both healthy and shock-resistant, and 82.6% sit in the safe zone. In Wallonia, the figures are 93.4% healthy, 48.0% healthy and shock-resistant, and 77.6% in the safe zone. Flanders is currently lifting the Belgian average.

The gap isn’t dramatic, but it holds. For sector positioning, the national figure of 94.9% is what matters. The regional nuance matters if you’re benchmarking against direct peers in your own market.

What this means for your agency

The sector average is solid. But averages hide individual situations.

Knowing where you sit relative to the 12.53% break-even line is how you know whether you’re in the 94.9% or outside it. BTC’s recommendations for agencies wanting to strengthen their position are concrete:

• Build out equity relative to turnover

• Improve cash management

• Review all supplier agreements

• Tighten payment conditions.

Service fees, charged transparently and kept separate from margin, should be revisited regularly against inflation and indexation.

The sector is healthy. The question is whether your agency is.

Sources

Graydon Shock Resistance Report & 9-grid, via BTC (Belgian Travel Confederation), Travel Intelligence Report Q1 2025

Graydon CreditSafe 2023 bankruptcy report, via VRT NWS (Belgium economy-wide failure data)

Graydon CreditSafe / UNIZO / UCM, KMO-Rapport 2025 (December 2025 economy-wide SME shock-resistance data)

Garantiefonds Reizen (GFG), public communications (sector insolvency record)