Businesses are cautiously spending on corporate travel as trade uncertainty looms

CNBC

22-07-2025

Corporations are continuing to spend on business travel, but are being strategic about how they allocate those dollars amid ongoing trade uncertainties, according to new reports from the Global Business Travel Association and travel and expense platform Navan.
Corporate travel spending activity increased 15% year over year in the second quarter of 2025, according to a business travel index published Tuesday from Navan.
Navan's index, backed by Nasdaq, is derived from millions of corporate business transactions on its platform. It examines the amount spent and number of transactions relating to airline travel, hotel reservations and expense transactions from corporate cards.
Amy Butte, Navan's CFO, said during an interview that from talking with other chief financial officers over the past few months, she never got the sense that corporate leaders would stop spending on business travel altogether. Instead, they are in "wait and see" mode.
"If you're making choices about where you're being cautious, we're not seeing people be cautious in the area of relationship building, either with their customers or with their teammates. We're still seeing the spend allocated towards travel as a key component of any business strategy," Butte said.
But while global business travel is expected to reach a new high of $1.57 trillion in 2025, according to a Monday report by the Global Business Travel Association, that total represents 6.6% year-over-year growth, which is less than the 10.4% increase that was previously predicted. GBTA cited trade tensions, policy uncertainty and economic pressures as the reasons for the more moderate growth.
A string of sentiment polls by GBTA also shows that corporate travel optimism for the rest of 2025 appears muted. The percentage of respondents who said they were optimistic about the overall outlook for the business travel industry in 2025 dropped sharply from 67% in November 2024 to 31% in April and declined slightly again this month to 28%.
The findings from both reports, grouped together with commentary from airline CEOs last week, show C-suite leaders are still largely left in wait-and-see mode amid President Donald Trump's fluid tariff policies, but companies appear now to have a better read on how they will manage the uncertainty.
"Historically, corporate travel has been the first thing, one of the easiest things, to minimize if you're a company," Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said during the company's earnings call this month, adding that corporate travel on the airline has been flat on a year-over-year basis.
But Butte said that Navan has not seen a drop-off in business travel. Instead, businesses are shifting how they are spending.
For example, Butte said businesses are continuing to commit to individual, face-to-face meetings, rather than spending on large group outings. The Navan index shows that spending on personal meals, meaning one-on-one meetings held over a meal, was up 9.8% from last year, while spending on team events and meals was the only category in the report that declined.
Navan did see some compression earlier in the year in the share of higher-priced airline tickets purchased that were first class or business class, Butte said, but she added that the platform has since seen an acceleration as uncertainty has lessened.
Airfare prices have also declined so far this year, which means business and consumers alike are spending less on plane tickets. Airfare fell 3.5% in June from a year earlier while inflation overall rose, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
GBTA CEO Suzanne Neufang said during an interview that CFOs have not cut travel spending off entirely, but are looking for efficient ways to get employees on the road. This may look like booking multicity trips, scheduling multiple meetings per trip or booking fewer trips per month, she said.
Neufang said the business travel industry has been focused over the past five years on making sure every trip has a purpose and delivers a return on investment.
"Gone are the days when there's really frivolous business traveling," Neufang said.
The new findings on business travel spending also come as airlines are reporting their quarterly earnings.
When Delta reported earnings on July 10, Bastian said he expects both consumer and corporate confidence to improve in the second half of the year, creating an environment for travel demand to accelerate.
Delta and other airlines saw travel demand come in weaker than expected at the beginning of the year, especially from price-sensitive customers traveling domestically. Bastian said back in April that Trump's trade policies were hurting bookings.
Bastian took a more positive tone this month, telling CNBC that corporate travel has stabilized as businesses have more clarity and confidence than they did earlier this year. But he said corporate travel is in line with last year, not the 5% to 10% growth Delta expected at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, Delta President Glen Hauenstein said on an earnings call this month that corporate travel trends are "choppy" and overall corporate volumes are expected to be "flattish" over last year.
United Airlines reported earnings last week. CEO Scott Kirby said during the company's call with analysts that so far this month, the airline has seen a double-digit acceleration in business demand as uncertainty has declined.
Andrew Nocella, United's executive vice president and chief commercial officer, added that the business traffic growth is "across the board" and not restricted to any singular hub or vertical, which he said reflects lessening macroeconomic uncertainty.
Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines are scheduled to report their quarterly results this week.