Business travel: a gradual return to business in 2025

Slowly but surely, companies are returning to business travel after the pandemic. Visit Business Travel Showwhich will be held in London on 25 and 26 June, is regularly polling key stakeholders to gauge the pace of this comeback. The show's organisers surveyed 163 professionals, most of them European (85%, including 39% in the UK). Among them were 80% travel managers and 17% from the purchasing sector.

The first finding is that, by the end of last year, 60% of companies had already returned to their pre-Covid travel volumes. It now remains to be seen what will happen to the remaining 40%, bearing in mind that one company in 10 (11.6%) believes that 2019 levels will no longer be reached. This figure can be explained in part by the environmental imperative: 15 % of companies feel the need to be more sustainable, even if the trend is slowing sharply compared with the previous year (43.8%). Price pressure is now the main factor, along with the alternative offered by new technologies.

Despite these obstacles, the data from the Business Travel Show confirm that gradual return to travel. 70 % of respondents expect their organisation's business travel activity to return to 2019 levels by the end of the year. Uncertainty remains high among travel managers: 8.1% of them do not know how their travel budget will evolve in 2025, compared to 2.8% last year.

" Almost four out of ten business travel budgets will increase this year, despite pressure on travel managers to cut costs "as the event organisers point out. They see it as " very positive news. (...) We expect last year's cost increases to stabilise throughout 2025, allowing travel managers to focus on travellers and return on investment. ".