The headline numbers on business travel are excellent. The World Travel & Tourism Council recently released its projection that the global value pool for business travel in 2024 is about $1.5 trillion.
NB: This is an article from McKinsey & Co.
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That’s up by more than 6 percent compared with 2019. For context, $1.5 trillion is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Spain or Mexico.
In the United States, the 2024 value pool expectation is $472 billion, which is 13.4 percent ahead of 2019. We should note that these numbers have not been adjusted for inflation, which has been significant. Even so, these are projections that should offer optimism about the path that lies ahead.
Why is business travel recovering? The tech company Calendly, which makes software that helps automate booking for corporate meetings, recently surveyed 1,200 business leaders – across roles, departments, industries, generations, company sizes, and regions – and found that, remarkably, 81 percent of respondents said that holding more meetings would help them in some way. Digging into the underlying data in the report reveals the “why” behind this statistic: people have found that there is no substitute for face-to-face engagement with their leaders and colleagues. Employees craving in-person encounters bodes extremely well for business travel.
According to the 2025 Global Meetings and Events Forecast from American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), 66 percent of meeting-planning professionals expect meeting spending to grow in the future. Meeting professionals also expect the majority of meetings next year to be in-person only, with an additional number of meetings affording a hybrid mix of virtual and in-person.
Taken together, these numbers paint a positive picture of business travel momentum.
Unmanaged travel could present new opportunities
Unmanaged travel – in which employees handle their own bookings – doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. But it offers much room for value creation, given the considerable amount of business travel that remains unmanaged.
Many firms that don’t opt to engage with travel management companies tend to be on the smaller side. While they may not want to contract for a managed travel service, they still desire some of its benefits. Tools that attempt to provide more structure for unmanaged business travel – or can add useful services around it – are especially intriguing.
For example, integrating an online booking platform, expense management software, and a travel data capture service could help improve a company’s visibility into its employees’ trips and spending. And new AI-powered travel agent bots could take searching, booking, and calendaring off employees’ plates – while offering transparency that allows employers to see the “logic” behind the bots’ choices.
