Today at GBTA Convention, the GBTA Foundation unveiled its Annual Global Report & Forecast finding global business travel spending will hit a record $1.25 trillion USD in 2015, 6.5 percent growth over 2014. Growth will remain strong through 2019, with business travel projected to grow 6.9 percent in 2016, 6.0 percent in 2017, 6.4 percent in 2018 and 5.8 percent in 2019.

The study, sponsored by Visa, Inc., showed a large majority of business travel spending in 2014 occurs in a few dominant markets. In fact, over two-thirds of total business travel spending continues to occur in the U.S., China and Western Europe. Currently Asia Pacific owns the largest share of the business travel spend market with 39 percent followed by North America with 27 percent and Western Europe with 24 percent. GBTA expects that by 2019, Asia Pacific will have gained another 3.5 percentage points in market share, while the United States and Western Europe will lose 2.7 percentage points and 0.6 percentage points, respectively.

The GBTA Foundation also identified five newly emerging markets often overlooked because they aren’t as large as the traditional powers or the BRIC markets. Their rapid growth however, all but assures these five countries will become the business travel markets of the future. The five countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and Turkey.

The top 15 business travel markets for 2014 were:

For Convention attendees who want to learn more, an education session in room 304AB at 11:30a.m., Global BTI Outlook: Global Trends and Forecast 2015-1019, will dive deep into the study and provide a fresh view of the business travel industry.