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Business Travel Outlook: Resilient 2024, Optimistic Plans for Growth, Technology and Sustainability in 2025
There is strong sentiment from the global business travel industry that 2024 outperformed expectations, paving the way for increased budgets, strategic investments and growth initiatives for 2025. According to GBTA’s latest industry poll released today, 86% of global travel professionals say that business travel performed on par or better than they anticipated in 2024. Additionally, with 67% of professionals stating their outlook is optimistic, the results suggest a strong desire for business travel expansion in 2025.
The GBTA poll offers significant insights into the trends, challenges and future expectations for global business travel, reflecting responses from almost 900 industry professionals including:
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Over half of buyers are unlikely to limit business travel in 2025, and a rising share (52%) predict an increase in their corporate travel budgets.
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Top factors driving their optimism: easing travel costs/corporate budgets keeping pace (46%), improving economy/inflation reduction (44%), and increased traveler confidence/more requests for travel (40%).
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Blended travel continues to rise, with 46% of buyers seeing more "bleisure" trips today than they did a year ago.
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Over half of buyers (53%) say their company’s employees are taking more "linked," multipurpose trips than they did a year ago, and 27% report fewer one day trips being taken.
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Buyers also see gains in employees making more sustainable travel choices, reporting a year-over-year increase in rail/train travel (38%) and multimodal trips (33%).
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Nearly half (49%) of travel programs plan to ramp up investments in technology, while artificial intelligence is gaining traction as 44% of respondents (up from 32% last year) voice excitement about AI’s impact on the industry.
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For New Distribution Capability (NDC), 29% of travel management companies (TMCs), online booking tools (OBTs) and global distribution systems (GDSs) report smooth implementation and are now offering NDC content to their clients.
Read the full announcement here.
View the complete 35th GBTA poll results and key highlights, along with the full series of GBTA Business Travel Industry Outlook polls. To learn more about GBTA Research, visit the GBTA webpage or email research@gbta.org.
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