As per GBTA, about 37% of global travel buyers foresee a dip in travel-generated revenue, signalling business slowdowns across industry.
MT Bureau
With a lot of stir in the corridors of White House of the United States of America (USA), including tariffs and entry restrictions, it is crucial for global business travel fraternity to weigh the scale of uncertainty sweeping in regarding the potential impact on business travel volume, spending and revenue for 2025.
According to a new survey conducted by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), business travel can take a blow primarily due to the entry restrictions policies for travellers from specific countries and advisories against travel to the USA. Underlining that travelling for work plays a vital role in supporting business growth, strong diplomatic ties and valuable connections, Suzanne Neufang, CEO, GBTA, opined, “Productive and essential business travel is threatened in times of economic uncertainty. This undermines economic prosperity and damages many sectors that rely on global business travel to survive and thrive.”
Overall, GBTA’s survey serves as a wake-up call, hinting that a downturn in business travel could ripple through and strain global economies.
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The key finding of the survey revealed
- 44 per cent of global buyers anticipate their organisation’s business travel spending and volume in 2025 will not be impacted, compared to 25 per cent of travel suppliers who say the same for their business travel revenue.
- Almost 29 per cent of global travel buyers expect a decline in business travel volume in 2025, averaging a 21 per cent decrease. However, 19 per cent travel buyers are uncertain how these policy changes are going to impact.
- 27 per cent of buyers predict a 20 per cent decrease on average in their business travel spending this year. Notably, with global business travel spending forecast to reach US$1.63 trillion in 2025, that could represent a potential decline in spending of up to US$88 billion.
- 55 per cent of buyers expect their company’s travel spend will not be impacted or may even grow.
- 37 per cent of travel suppliers and Travel Management Company (TMC) professionals anticipate a decline of 18 per cent on average in travel related revenue.
- 31 per cent of buyers at small programmes—with less than US$10 million of annual travel spend—expect their company’s volume will decline due to these restrictions. This is similar to the share of buyers at mid-sized (25 per cent) and large programmes (30 per cent) who expect a decline.
- 7 per cent of buyer organisations have revised their corporate travel policies for travel to or from the USA since January 2025 and 25 per cent said they are planning to or will consider doing so in the future. However, 64 per cent prefer to stay in the course and have no such plans.
- Approximately 20 per cent buyer organisations are considering cancelling, moving or pulling attendance from meetings located in the USA.
- 8 per cent have cancelled events from the USA. 12 per cent of buyers outside of the USA have cancelled meetings in America, or have relocated meetings (14 per cent) and events (10 per cent) somewhere else.
- 10 per cent are planning or considering cancelling employee attendance at
USA events. - 54 per cent of business travel professionals’ top concern was higher cost as tariffs can bring in inflation.
- 46 per cent were concerned about additional visa/passport processing hurdles.
- 23 per cent worry about the loss of market access/market share after the shift in policies.
- For travel suppliers (56 per cent) the major concern was business travel budget cuts.
- 23 per cent of global industry professionals personally know someone whose trip has been affected by the travel policy changes made by the USA.
