The four -year -old Business Travel Rout that the pandemic was on its way to continuing this year, but the US trade war fought this perspective.
“The great word is uncertainty,” said Suzanne Neufang, CEO of Global Business Travel Association, who predicted that worldwide spending would increase to $ 1.64 trillion in 2025, against $ 1.48 trillion by 2024.
But pessimism increased sharply amid President Donald Trump’s deep cuts in the government’s workforce and a stunning range of tariffs. Now, about 29% of US corporate travel managers and an equal participation abroad expect business trips to decrease this year due to government actions, according to a recent GBTA survey. Expected strings can harm business trips up to 22%, according to the group.
Experts in the sector warn that the sour of expectations so far does not translate into a collapse in reserves, despite signs of colder demand.
Business trips “did not fall from a cliff,” said Jonathan Kletzel, travel leader, transportation and logistics of the PWC consulting firm. “It’s definitely restricted now, but people will stop traveling? Probably not. If you are a heavy sales organization and not at the market meeting with your customers, your competitors are.”
Still, growing concerns around business travel coincide with the warnings of corporate leaders that US commercial policies injected new uncertainty into an economy that, a few months ago, sought on the right track to strengthen their strengths.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC last month that the carrier had to check their expectations for what was preparing to be the “best financial year in our history.” Travel demand was growing about 10% earlier this year, but since then it has decreased, he said, in part due to companies rethinking business trips and cuts in the federal workforce. Other airlines have signaled similar concerns, in some cases adjusting their growth plans or the ability to reduce reduction.
Hotel operators and reserve platforms are also feeling this. Expedia said on Friday that US travel demand is cooling. Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton have reduced their financial predictions in recent weeks, with the first of these hospitality giants alerting investors about “an expected continuation of declines in US government demand.”
Since the office of resuming, Trump has supervised mass layoffs and spending reductions throughout the federal bureaucracy, with many of the changes led by the project of the Efficiency Councilor’s Government Department of Government Elon Musk. While some of the cuts were interrupted in court, travel books for government contractors resisted a few months of busy.
Global Travel Associates, a Washington agency, DC that mainly serves government contractors, said travel sales fell 20% in the first quarter. Several had funded the US Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration rose in this spring, and these accounts fell 75%to 90%, estimated managing director Tom Ollinger.
Some GTA customers have changed to buy only refundable airplane tickets; Others canceled scheduled meetings or interrupted any new travel plan indefinitely, he said. In some cases, those with long -term staff abroad were instructed to drop everything and return to the base. “The organization has provided them with unidirectional tickets to return,” said Ollinger.
“Government groups are not happening,” said Jan Freitag, national director of market analysis of the real estate data company Costar. But many business meetings are still taking place, and although individual business trips are a little softer, “this may only be people who are not reserving so much,” he said.
However, Freitag warned: “It should [more] Tariffs get it right and companies have less sense from where their costs are going, they will start reducing costs. And the easiest place to control costs is to travel and training. ”
Navan, a corporate travel management service based in Palo Alto, California, said the reserves were made in the first four months of the year over the same period in 2024, despite a slight slowdown in April.
“Certainly, there is this feeling of waiting for another shoe to fall,” said Rich Liu, CEO of Navan. While CEOs are telling him that they are “feeling the tightening” of new import taxes and other policy movements, “they still have companies to manage,” Liu said.
Individual business travelers seem to be anxious. The travel insurance comparison site On -line Squaremouth saw an annual increase of 223% in polls for “canceling for work reasons” last month, with the purchases of these policies jumping 53%.
“This tells us that travelers are feeling uncomfortable,” said Rupa Mehta, CEO of Squaremouth. “In uncertain economic times, they want to understand the cost and value of flexible coverage before commitment.”
The current perspective is “a mixed bag,” said Lorraine Sileo, founder of Phocewright, a global travel research company. At the moment, “it seems that leisure trips will be impacted more than business trips,” she said, adding that “it will take more time for companies to feel the hint of an economic crisis” than tourists.
“We need to adopt a waiting approach and see” to see how business trips come out, said Sileo, “but there are indications that it will be a slow year for all types of US market travel in 2025.”