GBTA predicts worldwide growth in business travel spending in coming years
August 25, 2011
The Global Business Travel Association recently released their Travel Spending Outlook for 2011 through 2015. The report shows that global business travel spending increased 8.4 percent in 2010, after falling nearly 8 percent in 2009. The GBTA also predicts that by the end of this year, spending will reach over $1 trillion, which is another 9.2 percent of growth.
"Several countries are seeing the rebound happen at a much faster and more stable pace, and we're seeing that in the pace of business travel in the economies of China, India, Russia and Brazil," said GBTA executive director and COO Michael McCormick. "Business travel is closely correlated to the overall state of the economy. Based on our research, we can say that the global economy is going to steadily, although likely, slowly improve over the next few years."
Germany, China, Russia and Brazil are projected to experience two to three times the growth of business travel spending as that of economies such as the UK, the U.S., Germany and France. The latter group will also experience growth, it just will not be as significant. China's spending is expected to grow 11.2 percent, the highest in the study, while Germany won't do as well - with an anticipated growth of only 2.9 percent.
In the midst of all the spending, companies can save some money by using international calling cards to stay in touch with traveling employees while they are on the road.