Today we're about to present our first full-year results as a standalone company. Before that, I'd like to address the recent corporate activity and lots of conversation surrounding the company. We've engaged with all our substantial shareholders on this matter and have responded to the ASX accordingly. While I have no further comment on this matter, I would like to reinforce this: we have a very high conviction in our new strategy and our five-year growth plan. Our focus as a business remains firmly on that, on executing that strategy to deliver long-term value for both our customers and our shareholders. With that said, let's get to the numbers. I'm on page four. We are very pleased to deliver a solid result in line with our FY 2024 expectations, and this despite a very challenging consumer environment.
We think this is a very good outcome in this market, and I think it reflects the dedication of our team and our ability to stay focused while navigating significant change, including the recent merger. The key numbers are laid out here for you. On the left-hand side, EBITDA of AUD 39.4 million, cash of AUD 118 million. This is a significant amount to support our growth ambitions. Capital management has been a core focus, and we will talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation. Breaking it up into our two divisions, Webjet OTA reported an EBITDA of AUD 51.6 million, and our cars and motorhome business. For long-time listeners, that is formerly the GoC business, which consists of our consumer and affiliate brands, Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic. That division reported EBITDA of AUD 1.6 million. Let's get into some details.
On page five are all the key metrics that you'll be wanting to look at. As you'll be aware, look, the ongoing cost of living pressures are still weighing heavily on the travel industry, and particularly on consumer demand, particularly for domestic flights, which is a core part of our business. This has naturally flowed through to lower demand for our flights and also our other products like car rentals. On top of that, Webjet OTA bookings took a further hit during this period with Rex Airlines and their involuntary administration. That meant that they canceled their flights to all capital cities. Given that focus on the leisure market, we over-indexed with their sales on that.
Despite these significant headwinds, we have been able to deliver an EBITDA result commensurate with the prior year and exactly what we telegraphed both at our half-year results and at our strategy day. The key numbers here for you for the group: FY 2025 bookings were 1.5 million. That is 1% lower than FY 2024. TTV was AUD 1.5 billion. Revenue was AUD 139.7 million. Underlying EBITDA was AUD 39.4 million. That is pleasingly up 1% on FY 2024. The key thing there, you can see that margins are up, holding really nicely at 9.3% on a revenue basis and the EBITDA margin at 28.2%. It is a very strong result. Turning now to page six, this is what we call our strategy on a page that we outlined for all stakeholders in August last year as we prepared for the demerger.
This shows you all our strategic priorities for all our stakeholders that we've been working on over the last nine months. Now, I'm not going to go into detail on each of these pillars now, and I'll do so in the following pages. Suffice to say, I think you can see here a significant amount has been achieved in the last nine months and in the full financial calendar year. I think it's suffice to say we've been busy. I'm going to cover that a little bit later in the presentation along with our new FY 2030 strategic priorities. Let's get into some detail. We're first going to look at Webjet OTA on page eight. This is the core results for the OTA as a standalone business.
I think what you're seeing here is that our higher margin products and our focus on that is helping offset that softer domestic demand I just spoke about. The key figures for you: 1.3 million bookings, and that flows through to a slightly lower TTV compared with FY 2024 at AUD 1.3 billion. I think the key takeaway for OTA and the core business in that is that revenue optimization initiatives that we've spoken about, focusing on our international flight bookings, focusing on higher margin products, and selling our ancillaries, is helping offset that subdued environment, as I said. This delivered us a revenue of AUD 119.9 million with our revenue margin up at 9.1%. That's up on 8.8% from FY 2024, pleasing. EBITDA is AUD 51.6 million, again with an incredible margin at above 40%. All right, moving on to the next page.
This has got all the details for you here, our favorite page. This breaks down everything for you, comparing from FY 2024 to FY 2025, and all nicely laid out there for you. A couple of comments from me. FY 2025 bookings are down for OTA compared to FY 2024. I have spoken about this, really due to the softening of the domestic flights market, and I do not think we are in a club of one on that one. However, what is pleasing is our focus on international bookings has delivered. International bookings are up 11% compared to FY 2024. Domestic bookings, as I said, are down. I think the key thing to think about here is not only, obviously, the macro environment, but as I mentioned before, with Rex entering voluntary administration in the first half of FY 2025, Rex accounted for about 5% of Australian domestic capacity at June last year.
Because of the nature of their business, Webjet OTA was a key seller of that inventory. We over-indexed with them, and so that'll be looping through for us till about July. Okay, moving on to revenue. FY 2025 revenue is down 1%. Now, compare that to the bookings. That's given the focus we've been putting on the higher margin ancillary products and selling those. That's our with fries strategy, if you will. How do we add on to the flight? Also, the international flight bookings I've mentioned, that has been a core focus for the business. I think this proves that the business, in a tough domestic environment, has the ability to pivot and has the ability to focus on where there is growth, and there has been that growth in the international flight bookings. FY 2025 expenses are marginally up at 2%.
This accounts for the demerger synergies coming through primarily from the second half, our standard CPI increases for staff, but also a slight lift in our marketing costs, as telegraphed. This business has been under-marketed, and now we're starting to slowly lift that. In sum, FY 2025 EBITDA is down, but I draw your attention to our EBITDA margin, which remains very strong, as said, above 40%. Just wanted to take a moment to look a little bit more detail on some of those key drivers behind our push for higher revenue per booking. I am looking at page 10 now. I think if you look at the bottom here, there are some great visuals here that show you our strong progress. Firstly, international flights continuing to grow.
If you think about the market here and what we've talked about before, international supply has grown as capacity has re-entered the market. There's been some strong competition for international long-haul and short-haul coming into the market. This has provided really good downward price pressure, and we've been focused on capturing that. How? First up, our member program, our Webjet Member Program, newly introduced in the last year, that has been delivering attractive member-only offers that's got us great engagement with our customers and helped grow sales. We're continuing to take a leadership role in the rollout of NDC. For those non-airline geeks like us, that is the New Distribution Capability. The new way that airlines are distributing their content or their flight product, if you will.
We have taken a leadership role in that from very early on, and we are continuing to go hard on that this year. That gives us a competitive edge. It gives us differentiated content, and it gives us pricing advantages. Lastly, our AI-driven Trip Ninja technology. I will talk a little bit more about that later. Applying this across our multi-stop trip searches means that we can deliver great content, which continues to deliver great value for our customers: cheaper flights. We have only just begun utilizing that to our full advantage. I will talk a little bit more about that later. All right, the next piece there in the middle, let us look at air and non-air ancillaries and how this is helping us diversify our revenue streams. I will just explain that. Air ancillaries, that is beyond the ticket, if you will.
This is about us selling bags and selling seats. In the breakdown of the historical flight price, it's now broken down to pieces. Now we are helping airlines sell those bags and sell those seats to give the full experience for the customer. That's what we call an air ancillary. A non-air ancillary, as I said, this is our would-you-like-fries-with-that strategy. We have 1.5 million people booking their flights. That's us adding on the hotel, the car, and the insurance. This is how we're diversifying our business and how we're mitigating risk of our historically only one revenue stream coming from airline ticket sales and the commission on that. In the last year alone, I'm incredibly proud of the team, and a shout-out to all of those who are listening. We have launched paid seats for 18 airlines.
That's a huge effort, and that's up from zero a year ago. We have more airlines under development. That's a huge tech effort. What that does, as I said, allows us to give that full service and that full experience to our customers. That creates an extra revenue stream for us, which we're handsomely paid for by the airlines. Our non-air ancillary, so that's the insurance, the cars, the hotels, that's up 5% on FY 2024. As you can see from the chart here at the bottom, that now makes up 34% of our total revenue. That's significant. We expect this to grow, and our plan is to grow it as we focus on hotels and packages and our other ancillaries as outlined in March in our five-year strategic plan. This all results in our lift in revenue per booking. Look at that chart. It's impressive.
7% up over FY 2024. The market is soft, yes. This lift in revenue per booking is a key metric that we track, reflects our focus on optimizing revenue and on driving higher margin products to ensure that we serve the customer in full, but most importantly, capture the whole of the travel wallet. Lastly, on page 11, I just really wanted to touch on our exceptional results in customer service because at the end of the day, we're a customer-facing business. Look, we've been on a transformation journey in this area, probably a little bit longer than the rest of the business, and we've really focused on this in the last two years. We had some work to do post-COVID. For FY 2025, we've really built on some strong outcomes achieved last year.
have optimized our platform capabilities with implementation of AWS and embedding that now, and we have really streamlined workflows. We have lifted the level of our talent and their capabilities. Most people have an outsourced call center or service center, and we have the same. What we have done now is bring that in-house. It is based in Manila, but they are Webjetters, and we train them. That has really lifted the talent and their capabilities and clearly the outcome for our customers. We have done all of this with what I would call a back-to-basics focus on performance management, tighter cost control, and using AI to really help us get efficiencies. Plenty of awards that Webjet wins every year articulated there, awarded again the leading online travel agency in Australia. I think it is our customers who really give us the awards, and you can see that on the right-hand side.
We've seen measurable results here across our cost to serve, our service, and our experience. If I look at the operational things and break that down for you, enhancements around process and streamlining have reduced our contacts into our call center by 24% over FY 2024. That's because of better case resolution. We've reduced our repeat contacts by solving it the first time, a better user experience, and really focusing on improving the triage and how we talk to our customers. That has resulted in our cost per call and our cost per chat down 10% and 15% respectively. I think that's pretty admirable, and most companies would love to see those gains within a year. All of this, I think the most important thing is our customers are really happy, and that's important.
We've seen incredible feedback from our customers across the year, and these percentage improvement points on each of our three core metrics and how we measure our customer satisfaction on a daily basis. eight percentage points up on first contact resolution, five percentage points up on satisfaction with our agents, and a whopping 12% on our net promoter score. These are incredibly good scores, and we're really proud of them, and huge shout-out to the team. That's it for OTA. What I'd like to do now is move on to cars and motorhomes. You can see there on the title slide on page 12, there are logos of Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic in the bottom left-hand corner. These are our global car and motorhome rental marketplaces or e-commerce sites. Let's look at the key figures for the business. Bookings, 278,000.
TTV at AUD 191 million. Revenue, in line with TTV, at AUD 19.5 million, with really stable margins there at 10.2%. And our EBITDA are AUD 1.6 million. Now, that's worth taking a moment to reflect on. We reported at our first half last November that our EBITDA for this business unit was AUD 200,000. So to hit AUD 1.6 million for the full year is a large gain, and that's reflecting the focus of that business and the big moves made by down there in terms of restructuring, simplification, and automation. So really pleasing to see that come through. Nicely, a lift in EBITDA margin there too that I think is helpful for this business. Moving on, page 14 I'm on now, and this is the full details on all the statistics for cars and motorhome, and you can see FY 2024 and FY 2025 there.
As I just mentioned, I think the key thing to note here is the restructure of this business. It was a huge focus for the first half of FY 2025, and this is now complete, and the cost reductions are starting to show through. Tough calls, but we made them, and we made them fast. We took that deep dive, and the team worked really hard to identify opportunities to streamline, to simplify, and to automate, as I said, all of the sharpening our focus on customers that matter most. It is a journey, but the cost out is now flowing through, and it has resulted in lowering expenses and making this business far more sustainable. In detail here, just I guess a few more comments to pull out the highlights for you. Bookings are down 7% compared to FY 2024.
The cars is very much following flights and highly correlated. Domestic demand is down, so is cars. Motorhomes remains slightly impacted by that lack of inbound long-haul tourism down to New Zealand and Australia, not still quite at the same levels. Also the higher pricing of a motorhome still remains. I think expenses down, reflecting 10%, reflecting that restructuring I spoke about. If we just take a bit of a deeper dive on that business and what's going on. The business for this year, as I said, the core focus was on that restructuring, but they've also been able to, some incredible teams have been able to achieve other gains as well. We've refreshed the Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic brands, and the results are starting to come through. Prompted brand awareness for our Motorhome Republic, that's up 1%.
Now, that may seem tiny to you, but any brand market is going to love that, particularly when they're independent monitoring. It shows that competitors are down 6% over the period. That's a gain. Strong growth of our affiliate and supplier networks. Just to reinforce, around 50% of the revenue for these two businesses comes from affiliates. We're on a white label, if you will, for third parties. That's a key source of revenue that we're focused on, good scale and leverage. In the year, we onboarded 25 new car and motorhome affiliate partners. As you can see, the map there of my good old homeland in New Zealand, we now cover 75% of New Zealand's air passenger traffic. That's us serving all the major airports with our Airport Rentals technology.
There's obviously lots of product enhancements that have occurred throughout the year too, and also improving our range of payments to make sure we're leading there. Really pleased with how that business unit is coming along. All right, we'll turn to Trip Ninja now. For those of you, I always get asked lots of questions about Trip Ninja. And what is it again? How we think about Trip Ninja is in two ways. One, as its own tech startup that Webjet purchased. It's its own standalone business that builds machine learning-driven technology that solves complex flight-related problems. Can we purchase this business? The second is, I think about it as an arm's length supplier who is a core supplier into our OTA business because their tech is integrated into our OTA business to help us solve complex flight-related problems.
If I look at Trip Ninja, the standalone business, firstly, it's grown and continues to grow. It's pipelined across other travel intermediaries globally. What I mean by that is servicing other travel intermediaries. The key thing done here was the team rebuilt their sales and marketing strategy, brought out new digital assets, and updated their product positioning and their sales collateral. That's resulted in the signing of three new customers or third parties, if you will, who will now use the Trip Ninja technology and integrate it into their flight pathways. Now we've got a total of six customers, of which Webjet OTA is one. Once technical implementation is complete, we look forward to seeing more revenue coming in from those customers. In addition, the team is continuing to develop tech to solve those flight-related challenges.
With AI and analytics, it's a whole new world, and we're delighted to be on that journey in terms of uncovering what I would call hidden opportunities in flight retailing. Lastly, as I said, this is a core supplier to Webjet, and it's continuing to deliver us better prices and more unique content for Webjet OTA. To explain this further and to explain our beautiful picture there on the right, our Trip Ninja technology is already applied across our multi-stop trip searches. That's about 10% of our international flight searches. Our customers can already mix and match on our short haul for most of our Asia flight routes. What we're really excited about for the next year is that Trip Ninja will soon, in June, be integrated on all our long-haul international return searches.
That's delivering unique content that is not easily comparable and gives our customers a great price. That's a substantial amount, a lot more of our international searches, about four times what it's applied to now. You can see here on this little snapshot of our Webjet search page, you can look here, we're looking at a Melbourne to London return here, and you can see that your best alternative there is with Air India at AUD 2,524. What Trip Ninja is going to allow the customer to see is a mix and match of those two airlines that wouldn't naturally sit together. They're going to save AUD 152 or 6% by combining one leg up on Thai and one leg back on Air India. Now, that's a significant saving.
What we're pleased about is that we've learned with the 10% of our multi-stop, now we're rolling it out to a larger portion of our international searches. We're pretty excited about the potential of that too. In sum, I think extraordinary effort by the team and really solid results for FY 2025. To get us into a bit more detail on that, I'm now going to hand over to Layton.
Thanks, Katrina. Good morning to everyone on the call. All right, turning now to slide 19, which lays out the FY 2025 financial summary. Starting with the statutory results. Just like in the first half, there's a number of items in the FY 2024 comparative period that are purely accounting-related and stem from the demerger. We've adjusted for these in underlying operations to provide a clear like-for-like comparison of financial performance.
This aligns with what was presented in the demerger booklet, and importantly, is the last time you'll see adjustments of this nature as we move beyond that FY 2024 comparative period. I think the simplest way to think about these adjustments is like wrong pocket items. What would have previously eliminated on group consolidation before the demerger now has the corresponding amount or impact sitting in Web Travel Group. Once we adjust for these items, along with share-based payment expense and a few one-off non-operating expenses, which I'll cover off on the next slide, that gives us underlying EBITDA for FY 2025 of AUD 39.4 million. We've included the reconciliation from statutory to underlying EBITDA again for you there, and that's in the bottom right-hand corner of the slide there. Moving down the page to depreciation and amortization.
Similar to the first half, the FY 2024 comparative here does not include AUD 3.9 million of amortization expense, which is specific to the Webjet OTA business. To keep things consistent with FY 2025 and future periods, we have added this back into underlying operations again. FY 2024 also included a goodwill impairment expense, and that related to the cars and motorhomes business, so formerly known as GOSI. Moving down the page again and taking a look now at net interest and finance costs. Both the FY 2024 comparative and first half of FY 2025 included related party interest expense, which has since ceased to apply post the demerger. As a result, net interest income was positive in the second half of FY 2025 and will continue to be so moving forward given our strong cash balance and no debt.
In terms of tax, as communicated at the half, we expect an effective tax rate of around 30% moving forward. This is aligned with our predominantly Australian-based earnings profile. Lastly there, underlying net profit after tax for FY 2025 increased to AUD 20.9 million. Let's move on now to the next slide and take a look at technology and corporate overheads and non-operating expenses. Starting with technology and Trip Ninja, the AUD 2.8 million loss for FY 2025 is in line with what we telegraphed at the half and really reflects the higher headcount costs within that business as we continue to build out the technology there and expand its capabilities. In terms of corporate overheads, these came in at AUD 11 million for FY 2025, which is actually a bit lower than what we originally anticipated and communicated at the half.
That is primarily due to the absence of short-term incentives for FY 2025, plus the fact that not all of the demerger-related synergies have fully materialized just yet. As Katrina touched on earlier, there is also a portion of those synergies that have been allocated out to the business units for their respective share. Look for consistency and ease of comparison here with what was outlined in the demerger booklet. The FY 2024 comparative has been adjusted to include those AUD 2.6 million of demerger-related synergies, which reflects the additional costs required to support Webjet Group as a standalone listed business. Looking ahead, we expect corporate overheads to increase to circa AUD 13 million in FY 2026 as those demerger-related synergies continue to materialize over the course of the year. There are also some additional headcount costs there relating to key hires that were brought on to support our growth initiatives.
Finally, on this slide, just touching on non-operating expenses and noting these are all one-off in nature. The most material item here is the accrual we've taken up in FY 2025 for the proposed ACCC penalty, along with our own legal costs associated with those proceedings. The remainder there relates to one-off consulting fees, redundancy costs from the restructure that was recently completed over in New Zealand, and some one-off staff payments specifically linked to the demerger. Okay, turning now to the balance sheet, that's on slide 21. The theme here is very consistent with the half. The standout being our cash balance, which strengthened further in the second half of FY 2025 thanks to trading performance. That's also coupled with the demerger cash allocation we received in the first half. The increase in trade and other payables and other liabilities.
Now, that mainly reflects that accrual we've taken up for the ACCC penalty I mentioned on the previous slide. Other current liabilities have also increased, and that simply relates to our tax obligations now as a standalone group. Finally, non-current liabilities are similar to the first half, with that reduction you see from March 2024 simply reflecting the transfer of related party balances as part of the demerger process. No debt, net cash of AUD 118 million as of 31 March 2025. Just a reminder, that net cash figure excludes AUD 31 million of restricted cash. Look, for us, this strong cash position really allows us to both continue to invest in our strategic growth initiatives as well as retain the flexibility to pursue any potential M&A opportunities that may arise. Moving on to cash flow now. I won't spend too much time here.
Similar to the half, FY 2025 working capital and cash conversion were both impacted by the demerger-related accounting adjustments that I've touched on. Looking ahead, we expect cash conversion to normalize at around that 100% mark in FY 2026 onwards. As previously communicated, no dividends have been declared for FY 2025, and that's simply due to a lack of available franking credit in the newly demerged Webjet Group. That said, we plan to commence dividends from FY 2026, and I'll speak a little bit more about that and capital management shortly. Turning to CapEx now. CapEx for FY 2025 was AUD 13.3 million, which is in line with the run rate from the first half and reflects the continued investment we're making in our key focus areas. Looking ahead to FY 2026, we're expecting underlying CapEx to grow broadly in line with inflation.
Plus there's the additional circa AUD 5 million of incremental investment for FY 2026 that's tied to our strategic growth initiatives, which we outlined back in March at our strategy day. Finally, now, turning to capital management. Initially we had intended to announce an on-market buyback alongside these results. However, given the recent receipt and subsequent rejection of the non-binding indication of interest from BGH Capital, the board has determined it's appropriate to defer implementing any such initiatives at this time. That said, we remain absolutely fully committed to returning surplus capital to our shareholders, and we intend to do an on-market buyback when the circumstances permit. Looking a bit more broadly now, our continued approach and commitment to disciplined capital management, it's one that's really focused on long-term value creation whilst maintaining our financial strength and flexibility.
To briefly outline the key pillars of our capital management strategy, the first pillar here is ensuring we maintain our financial resilience and flexibility. We really want to make sure we're in a position to be able to quickly respond to any dynamic market and operating conditions as they evolve. We'll continue to assess how best to allocate capital across both our strategic investment opportunities and returns to shareholders. The second pillar here is centered around growth-focused investment in M&A. We remain committed to investing in the core business and progressing our strategic growth agenda, but also where it makes sense, we'll absolutely consider disciplined M&A opportunities. Ones that strengthen or expand our capabilities or increase scale and really align with our long-term priorities. The final pillar here is all about shareholder returns.
We're committed to commencing sustainable ordinary dividends from November this year, with a target payout ratio of 40-60% of underlying impact. We will continue to monitor and actively assess options to return any additional surplus capital to shareholders as appropriate. In summary, we will continue to take a considered and disciplined approach with a clear focus on delivering sustainable long-term value to shareholders. Thank you, and I'll hand back to Katrina.
Great. Thanks, Layton. All right. We just might take a few moments now to cover forward-looking. I'll first touch on our FY 2030 strategic plan. In March, we announced our new plan for the next five years. It's a bold new chapter for Webjet Group, and we're pretty excited about it. Turning to page 26 just to summarize up how we're thinking about this. In the last sort of 10 months, we've been really focused on realizing the opportunity that this demerger has brought us. That's to take a good business, which consistently delivers, and give it the investment it deserves to make it great. We've now got our dedicated board and our dedicated balance sheet, as previously spoken about. Most importantly, a singly-focused team on a mission to grow. Last year, we did a rigorous substantive deep dive on this business.
We have done the work, a lot of it. We confirmed in a really robust way that there is more opportunity for this business than we believed. We think we can deliver well above average growth by FY 2030. As you can see here, AUD 103 billion total addressable market. That is huge, and it remains highly compelling to us. We are well positioned to capture it with our brand. In addition, we undertook brand research with 3,500 people and looked in detail at every single one of their last three travels or trips. For those of you who do not live and breathe market research, that is statistically significant and robust. It is the first time we have done it in years. We analyzed with that every element of data in our business. We now have a very clear and robust strategic plan to double our TTV by FY 2030.
We think this sets the stage to propel this business to new heights over the next five years. We have some very clear strategic priorities to deliver that. That said, as Layton mentioned, look, we're respectful of our capital position, and we do have substantial cash reserves. We do have a robust balance sheet to pursue this growth. In terms of our strategic priorities, and I might just color this more a bit on page 27 about where we're going from to. A core focus, and I've spoken multiple times, is about revitalizing the iconic Webjet brand. We've done that with Airport Rentals. We've done that with Motorhome Republic. Now we're doing it with the Webjet brand. What does that look like? That means our move into international flights. We've been known for domestic, and we've been known for flights.
Now we're going to be known for travel. For international flights, we currently have about 20% of our bookings that are on international. That's growing. I've already shown you that. We have strong ambitions to grow that even further, up to 25-30% of our bookings. We're going to be expanding our hotel and packages offering. We're being flight-led. That's cool. Now we're going to be offering more strongly hotels and packages to serve the whole customer need. We are, by default, a service provider for business travel, and we do it so in an unstructured capacity. Now we're going to be focusing on this for a standalone offering to address what we see as a market gap, where it's purely digitally-led and seamless experience for a small to medium-sized business market. Lastly, as I said, the brand, but underpinning all of this is loyalty.
This is an iconic Aussie brand where 73% of Aussies and Kiwis know who we are. That is an incredible asset. We are going to revitalize it. Underpinning all of that is a drive to drive loyalty with those customers. If that is the big moves, on page 28 is what we call our strategy on a page. This is the plan for our next horizon. It articulates our vision is really to become that first choice for Australasians to book travel. You should be able to sit on your couch and do it all with your fingertips on your phone or on your iPad. It should all be there for you. That is our vision. We are here to make that experience great. Here to get a little joy while you are doing it and joy while you have your trip.
We're going to keep coming back to this slide because this has got our strategic priorities and the key levers that we're seeking to pull. What you can expect from us at the half and again in another full is reporting back on these initiatives and how we're going. If that's the context, let's have a look forward to what FY 2026 is actually starting to look like. I'm on page 30 now. I think strong progress is being made. Look, let's be real. We only spoke to you about this two months ago, but we are pretty focused. The business is benefiting from that focus on these new growth initiatives. In terms of being the leading brand, we've onboarded our inaugural CMO. The brand relaunch is on track. The market's really responsive right now to our tests and learns in marketing.
A good example of that is we're regularly doing campaigns. One we did recently was very much around flights and packages to Europe and Asia. We saw over 40% uplift in our flight bookings and about 20% uplift in TTV coming from that. Again, the same in packages, up 18% in our package bookings with an increase of 8% in TTV. That was from just a short targeted campaign. We're doing these things to learn for when we relaunch the brand. That gives us strong confidence in how we're going to be able to deliver on that. Capturing more of the travel wallet. We've spoken about this. Our direct channels are up 9% for both cars and motorhomes. That means that we're starting to own those customers more. We're progressing ahead with our loyalty strategy and development of that.
As I said, the business is really benefiting from focus. Our hotels and packages are strongly up on member sign-ups for hotel deals. Twenty-eight percent of our package bookings are coming from first-time customers. That is new-to-brand customers. That is incredibly valuable. Our international flights are doing really well. That is 23% of our flight bookings thus far. Bear in mind, we are only a little bit into the new year. As I mentioned before, we are really excited about the price differential we are going to be able to offer our customers when we integrate Trip Ninja across all our long-haul international return flights. Aligning with our brand relaunch in the second half of fiscal year 2026, we will be launching our new holiday packages and tours. We are partnering with some incredible external providers at the same time as our brand launch.
Really pleased to announce that Trip is going to be one of our partners in that. Lastly, in terms of operational excellence, the restructuring benefits are on track in cars and motorhomes. That was one of the key moves for that business. Look, as I said, we're really pleased about progress being made. In terms of outlook, I'm turning now to page 31. For Webjet OTA, the first six weeks has been a bit soft. The timing of Easter and Anzac Day on a year-on-year basis means that a year-on-year comparison is not like for like. Bear that in mind. That said, domestic bookings are down 11%. As I said, the Rex, the loss of those capital city flights will continue to loop until the end of July. Most importantly, even though the market's a bit soft, international bookings are 5% up.
That is really pleasing. It is doing exactly what we want it to do by focusing on it. Cars and motorhome, I can share that the trading for the first six weeks of FY 2026 is in line with expectations. If I take a step back and look at it from the overall group, this really is a transition year. This is an investment year. We are planning to make investment of up to AUD 15 million this year to support our strategic plan. It is well overdue. As mentioned at our strategy day, based on that, our FY 2026 underlying EBITDA is expected to be broadly in line with FY 2025. There is a weighting on that to the second half, given the investment and growth. That assumes no further deterioration in trading, given it is so early on in this period.
Given the world's a bit of a crazy place right now, we remain cautious, I think like everybody in the industry, and mindful and awake on listening to what's happening in the macroeconomic environment, and particularly in the U.S. As Layton mentioned, dividends are anticipated for FY 2026 in line now with our now formally announced dividend policy. A share buyback is in consideration when our circumstances permit. I think I can probably wrap now, but I'd like to say just a couple of things. I'd like to say thank you to our shareholders, those who have been with us for a while, and to those of us who are newly joining us on this journey. Look, as a team, we have high conviction in our new strategy. We're really excited about our growth agenda. We're grateful for your continued engagement.
We've delivered a solid result here this year. We have the iconic brand here in Australia, New Zealand, that Kiwis and Aussies know and trust, and we're just getting started. Lastly, I just want to say a huge thank you to our team. We may be a tech business, but we are driven by our people. None of the results or achievements that I've spoken about here today would be possible without them. A big thank you, guys. I know you're all listening. Thank you to everybody on the line. With that, Operator, I'll hand over to you for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Damen Kloeckner with CLSA.
Hey, Damon. How are you?
Hi, guys. Good, thanks. Good morning. I just had a couple of questions. First one's a bit of a prickly one, so apologies in advance. Just wanted to clarify the decision to delay the buyback sounds like it relates to BGH's stipulation in their SOI of no distributions. That might not be the right way of reading it. If so, can you confirm whether you continue?
Damon, I'm sorry. I think you just broke out at the important part of that question. Can you try again?
Yeah, no problem. The decision to delay the buyback sounds like it relates to BGH's stipulation in their SOI of no distributions. If so, can you confirm whether you continue to engage with them over a possible takeover?
Look, the board engages with all our shareholders. I can confirm there is no other engagement with BGH at this time. We are in line with our market disclosures on that. With respect to the buyback, look, the board has considered, obviously, all the activity that's going on right now. We deemed it appropriate at this point in time not to pursue a buyback. As mentioned, it's definitely within our sights. When the circumstances permit, we will be pursuing that.
Okay, thanks. Can I also just ask around Trip Ninja? Are you able to provide any kind of forward expectations on the level of losses expected for FY 2026?
Look, not at this time. I think you can see there the FY 2024. You can see the FY 2025. Think about this as a tech startup, which is powering out in our innovation.
Sure. And then just last one for me. Can you just give us a little bit more color on how the member program, the NDC rollout, and Trip Ninja are driving the positive mix shift towards international and ancillaries? And are there any other initiatives to this end that we should be aware of?
Sure. Okay. I'll start with the member program. This was newly introduced from about September last year. The objective of this is for you to become a member of Webjet. For you, it unlocks special deals or special privileges, etc. Now, because we're focused on growing our international flights, we've been using that channel, if you will, to focus on international flight offers and international flight deals. That's when I say member engagement is up. Member deals are really driving strong engagement and sales. We're very much focusing in on that international piece. We own domestic. We're the largest OTA owning domestic in Australia. We don't own international. That is the easiest place for us to begin to take a leadership position. That's why we've really focused the member program on that.
For Trip Ninja, as I said, think about it like this is a tech startup inside of Webjet. And the OTA is one of its primary customers. Now, what this does is uses AI to break up your query, go find airline segments that wouldn't normally be sold together, and put it together on one ticket or one PNR. And what Trip Ninja does is we've only applied, I guess, level one of that today, which is on our multi-stop trips. So that's if you're flying from Melbourne to Singapore, stopping off for a couple of days, and then going up to London, that's where we've applied it today. Now, I've called it Trip Ninja 2.0. The teams continue to laugh and say, "That's not what it's called, Katrina." But the next level that we're rolling out now applies it to international long-haul. So that Melbourne to London example.
Straight through from Melbourne to London. In June, we were waiting on a piece of technology that needed to drop in first before we could plug this now in for the next level of Trip Ninja. That is why we are excited. If you think about Trip Ninja, it is only applied to 10% of our international searches today. From June, it is going to apply to another 44%. That means that customers will be able to get those great prices. In about two-thirds of the cases, it will be up to about 30% cheaper. We will be able to deliver that to customers from June. That is why we are pretty excited about how that is driving international.
Thank you.
Thanks, Damon. Lovely to hear from you.
Your next question comes from John O'Shea with Ord Minnett
Good morning, John.
Morning, Katrina. Just a couple of questions from me. Just sort of a follow-on from what you're talking about, Trip Ninja. Obviously, 11% growth in international bookings in FY 2025. Would it be reasonable to assume that given the penetration and the changes that you've articulated in relation to that product, that you'd be expecting some sort of acceleration in that growth rate next year in terms of international growth and international bookings, other things being equal? That's my first question.
Yeah, spot on, John. That is absolutely our aspiration. If you think about it now, we've very deliberately started to focus on this within the last year, international. Then we've added the members. We're giving members special international deals. Now we've got Trip Ninja. We're taking that from just applying to 10% to now a total of 54% of our international long-haul. With those sort of key three drivers, we're anticipating an uplift in international.
Yep. Thank you. That answers that one for me. Now, I also noted that you spoke about the guidance being weighted to the second half. I think I heard you say, given the level of OPEX required. Can you just perhaps clarify what you're talking about there? I'm assuming you're meaning that your AUD 10 million additional OPEX is part of your strategic plan. A lot of that will come in the first half as opposed to the second half.
Good morning, John. It's Layton here. Yeah, that's correct. The weighting to the second half is sort of consistent with both the phasing of our strategic initiatives and how we see the revenue building through the year. Many of the investments we're making early on, particularly in marketing, are really geared to unlocking that second half uplift.
Sure. Did I interpret what you say correctly that you will be investing more of that OPEX in the first half than the second half?
Correct.
Okay. Thank you. That's it from me. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, John.
Your next question comes from Ben Wilson with Wilsons Advisory.
Hi, Ben. How are you?
Yeah, thanks, Katrina. Good morning, guys. Just if we focus on domestic bookings just to start with, just interested in your thoughts on capacity. I think according to the latest buyer figures, domestic capacity was down 6% in February versus PCP. Are you seeing any signs that we'll see an increase or, I guess, even a bottoming out in capacity sometime soon?
Look, good question. I think there's an article in The Finn this morning that gives you some insight to that as well. Look, we are not seeing capacity rise. I think your figure there around about 6% down is appropriate. We are in close dialogue with, obviously, our mates at Qantas and Virgin on a regular basis. I do not think that we are going to see any capacity uplift in the domestic market for a while. What we are projecting and forecasting is that to remain flat.
Okay, great. Thanks, Katrina. Maybe just moving to capital management. Just wondering, can you give a sense for the quantum of the buyback you would be targeting when you're ready to kickstart that?
Morning, Ben. It's Layton. Look, we're still working through all that. We'll sort of update accordingly when we're ready to move on that. At this stage, no specific guidance on the quantum.
Okay, no problem. Maybe just finally on Trip Ninja for me. Can you say what sort of revenue framework the third-party customers are on? Is it sort of SaaS or more transactional? Again, can you give some level of quantum you're expecting from that?
Look, it's a mix of both, both SaaS and transaction-based. I won't give quantum in terms of that right now. We've signed three, and it takes a while to do tech integration, and then they come through. I look forward to sort of talking about that in the future a bit more. For now, I think the key takeaway is this is a tech startup. We were their first kind of real integration. That happened about two years ago. We really learned a lot in the last year. Now we're rolling it out to this next level of capacity. I think other customers will be on a journey like that as well.
Okay. Thanks very much, guys.
Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert at Jarden.
Good day, Ben. How are you?
Very well. Good morning, team. Busy few weeks for you guys. I appreciate the sensitivities around M&A and lots of stuff. I'm just a bit confused around the buyback view, not to execute. If you're not engaging with them anymore, you look at consensus valuations, and the average is over a buck. I think straight's probably 30% below your longer-term aspiration. Not factoring it in. If you've got that level of confidence in the strategy, and there's obviously some positive signs coming through, market notwithstanding, I don't understand why you wouldn't execute and either force their hand to come out and give a fuller offer or just give the market confidence in your confidence that the valuation or current share price is materially below what you think it's worth.
Yeah. I understand your perspective, Ben, and I hear you. Look, as said, we had fully intended to announce one alongside these results. Given the receipt of the NBIO and the subsequent rejection, various parts at play here. The board has determined it's inappropriate to announce a buyback at this point in time. That said, we remain fully committed to doing this in due course. We'll kind of announce that when appropriate. There's obviously lots of factors in consideration. Ultimately, that's a board call.
Okay. So in terms of when appropriate, approach that sensitivity around it. When appropriate is when you've got clarity if anything else is going to be happening from the M&A front or it's put to bed and you can run the business as usual without that thing happening in the background.
Yeah, I think those are definitely inputs. And there's a few others as well. Clarity is always a gift. But we'll be clear with the market in due course. But it was a clear thing that we wanted to do today.
Okay. Thank you. Just the revenue per booking chart, I like it is a good one. It obviously really sort of goes to what you are trying to do in terms of driving ancillaries and the profitability. Just interested in—I appreciate it is a bit of a challenging question given there is no direct comp, I suppose, globally. How do you think is sort of best practice? Where is the aspiration when you look at those T2 aspirations and margin aspirations? Is it AUD 120 a booking? How are you thinking in terms of where that could get to?
Yeah, look, I mean, I love that chart too. I think the key thing is it very much encapsulates our strategy, right? This business has been a domestic flight-led business. Now we are aiming to expand that and grow our international and our air ancillaries, our non-air ancillaries. Really, we have the people coming. They know who we are. They trust us. Our customers in the research told us that they want to buy everything in one place. That gives us really strong conviction in that what we're doing is right. How we think about that in terms of where could that figure go? I won't be drawn on terms of what we've got as internal targets, etc., on that now. It's safe to say revenue per booking, it's a key metric that this business is motivated around.
We think there's significant upside into that. That's why we have outlined it in terms of where we can get to in our FY 2030 strategy.
Just one final one, if I could. Just in terms of overrides, I appreciate you've been a much more domestically skewed business where there's less propensity or opportunity around overrides. Obviously now you're pushing your international. Presumably, this opens up a more profitable channel for flights. How far down that route are you? Is it an area that was probably a little bit underdeveloped in terms of maximizing that previously? Just interested in how big an opportunity is driving more overrides on the flight side. Now you're going a bigger international mix and probably ability to partner with a larger group of international airlines.
Yeah, spot on. There's been so much shift, I think, in overrides post-COVID. And domestic really sort of reduced dramatically in terms of overrides. There's an overall sort of shift, I think, in that market. It's a known in the airline industry that overrides are still far more attractive for international. We've spoken about before that an international booking to us is far more valuable, significantly so than a domestic booking. In terms of our focus on that piece, we have a variety of methods of how we engage with the airlines and a variety of the revenue streams. We're looking at each individual one of those and how we optimize those and work with our partners to optimize it.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you.
Your next question.
Yes, thanks, Operator. I think we've got time for one more. Turns out we're very popular right now and have a very full day of engagement. I think we've got time for one more.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Wei-Wing Chen with RBC Capital Markets.
Hey, Wei-Wing. How are you?
Hey, good, good. It's my team. Thanks for letting me be the last question. I guess my question's around a third airline in Australia. No one, I guess, to date has found a way to viably run one. How does Webjet win if the domestic market remains a duopoly? Does your FY 2030 sort of ambitions make any assumptions around more competition re-entering the domestic market?
Look, our FY 2030 plan does not make any assumptions around a third airline. We welcome more competition. We'd love to see that. We haven't assumed that at all. I think you've got to come back to why do people continue to use Webjet. We have a distinct competitive advantage in offering choice and convenience. The ability to fly up on one airline and fly back on another and have that on one ticket and do that really fast is highly convenient for customers. That's why they choose us. It's the easiest way to find the best value on any route. I think what we have added into our FY 2030 planning to think about is loyalty. If we're honest with ourselves, this is an area that we need to play a bit of catch-up on. That's why we're really investing in that strategy.
How do we make our customers really sticky and stay with us? The second piece to that that I think you can think about is the business travel. Those customers have a much higher frequency of booking, so a much higher lifetime value. Turns out we do business travel. We just do it in a fairly unstructured manner. We are moving that to a more structured capacity. We think that will give us considerable upside as well.
Cool, cool. And then just one more, if I can. There was a—
No, wait. You can be cheeky. Go ahead. You had one more.
There was a reported merger offer in the media. So philosophically, does a merger make sense to you? Like, I guess, HelloWorld, their core is offline leisure travel, DMC, wholesaling. Does that have any synergies with Webjet?
Look, I think those are questions for HelloWorld. I can tell you there's no proposal on the table from HelloWorld right now. The board, we engage with all our shareholders. We consider any proposal that's put to us. Our job is to maximize value for shareholders. That's always front of mind.
Cool. Thank you.
All right. Back to you, Operator. Lastly, thank you, everybody, so much for dialing in this morning. A solid result. We look forward to talking with you in due course.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.