Diminished Prospects: Business Travel Spending Unlikely to Reach Pre-2019 Levels

In our newly released Business Travelers: A Multi-Country Survey Report, we highlight attitudes toward new ways of working and traveling post-pandemic. Our findings are based on a survey of business travelers from four major hubs – U.S., U.K., Australia and India – to get a global perspective on the behavior of corporate travelers.

More than half of the respondents across the four countries stated that they expect their company’s business travel spending to increase in 2023 from 2019 levels.

However, our assessment of the survey data revealed a pessimistic outlook for the overall recovery. Most business travelers in the U.S. and India expect spending to reach 2019 levels in the next 1 to 3 years. However, a majority of business travelers in the UK and Australia stated that it is highly unlikely that business travel spending will reach 2019 levels ever again.

This data-intensive report presents the findings from this survey and digs into all major aspects of a business trip – purpose, frequency, duration, travel destination, booking methods, and booking behavior – with a key focus on flights and accommodation, and including in-destination travel behavior.

Business Travelers: A Multi-Country Survey Report 

Business travel spending is unlikely to reach 2019 levels in the near future as corporations are implementing stringent travel policies and the availability of video conferencing options is expected to displace a share of business traffic.

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