Chinese business travel to rise sharply, despite economic uncertainty

Chinese business travel spending will continue to experience strong growth in the next five years, despite the economic turbulence currently affecting the country, a new report has forecast.

Revealing its latest outlook at the GBTA Convention 2015 in Orlando, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) said that Chinese business travel spending will increase 61% over the next five years, from US$261 billion in 2014 to US$420bn in 2019.

That increase is greater than the business travel growth forecast for the next eight largest countries combined, including the US, Germany, India, UK, Indonesia, France, Turkey and Japan.

“Despite recent economic speed bumps, China will pull away as the global leader in business travel over the next five years,” said GBTA’s executive director & chief operating officer, Michael W. McCormick. “On the horizon, we’ve identified five nations that are also seeing extraordinary growth and could very well turn into the business travel markets of the future. Another market to watch is India, which is statistically where China was 15 years ago.”

Overall, the GBTA outlook predicts that global business travel spending will hit a record US$1.25 trillion in 2015, 6.5% higher than 2014. And growth will remain strong until the end of the decade, with spending projected to grow 6.9% in 2016, 6.0% in 2017, 6.4% in 2018 and 5.8% in 2019.

In 2014, more than two-thirds of total business travel spending occurred in the US, China and Western Europe. Currently Asia Pacific owns the largest share of the business travel market, with 39%, followed by North America (27%) and Western Europe (24%). And the GBTA expects that by 2019, Asia Pacific will have gained another 3.5 percentage points in market share, while the US and Western Europe will lose 2.7 and 0.6 percentage points respectively.

GBTA also identified five emerging markets which are expected to become key business travel markets of the future. These are Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland and Turkey.

And India is poised for “breakout growth”, according to GBTA, with business travel spending expected to grow at an annual rate of 11.5% per year through 2019, by which time it will be in the top five global countries for business travel.

sourced:traveldailymedia.com