Business Travellers

The global business travel industry is expected to recover and see an increase in 2023 compared to 2022. Companies are planning to send more employees on trips and travel suppliers anticipate a rise in corporate travel spending. The finance, insurance, professional services, and consulting sectors are leading the growth in travel spending. Despite some economic challenges and uncertainty about the return of China, the industry remains optimistic about the continued recovery and employees’ willingness to travel for work.

The insights mentioned are from the Q1 2023 Business Travel Outlook Poll conducted by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). The poll, which is the 30th in the series tracking the development of the business travel industry, surveyed over 600 business travel buyers, suppliers, and industry professionals worldwide. The poll provides a comprehensive view of the current state and future outlook of the global business travel industry.

According to Suzanne Neufang, CEO of GBTA, the association continues to closely monitor the changing state of global business travel by gathering diverse perspectives and insights from the industry. Neufang also mentions that the return of business travel will differ across regions, sectors, and companies, but a majority of corporate travel managers expect their companies to have more business travel compared to last year, despite ongoing concerns of a global recession.

Business Travellers

The latest GBTA poll shows that travel managers expect more business trips in 2023 with 78% of them expecting either a lot more or more trips compared to 2022. Companies are also expected to increase their business travel spending with 86% of travel suppliers expecting spending by corporate customers to be much higher or somewhat higher in 2023 compared to 2022.

Business travel bookings and spending are returning to pre-pandemic 2019 levels with 67% of domestic travel bookings and 68% of domestic travel spending back to 2019 levels. The top industries for growth in business travel spending in 2022 were finance and insurance, professional, consulting, scientific, and technical, and software, hardware and technology.

The weakest growth in travel spending was seen in non-profits, associations, and foundations, software, hardware, technology, and educational services. The top areas for business travel spending in 2023 are sales/account management meetings, internal meetings, and conferences, trade shows, and industry events.

Some companies have implemented stricter pre-trip approval processes to manage risk and control costs but 49% of travel buyers say pre-trip approval is never required for domestic business travel. Staffing for travel suppliers is still suppressed but 65% expect staffing to increase in 2023. The majority of buyers expect their company’s travel program staff size to remain the same or be larger in 2023.

Written by: Jill Walsh

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