How have President Trump’s tariffs impacted corporate travel?
How have President Trump’s tariffs impacted corporate travel? According to an article in Business Travel News… not too much. According to the article:
Business travel looks like it will not be immune to the chaos. BTN in January and February surveyed 256 travel buyers regarding their outlook for business travel in 2025. The data, originally collected for an upcoming State of the Industry Report that has now been delayed, showed significant optimism among travel buyers. That optimism is starting to dim, according to 145 travel buyers re-surveyed April 3 to 4 as industries across the board braced for the impact of Trump’s tariffs.
Forty-one percent of travel buyers surveyed by BTN in April said negative economic indicators including the stock market drop, threat of a trade war caused by tariffs and erosion of consumer confidence were having a significant or very significant impact on their companies’ travel activities. Thirty-eight percent said such indicators were having little to no affect on their companies’ travel. Twenty-two percent said it was having some impact.
While companies that planned to have the strongest travel budgets in 2025 remained confident in their original trajectory of spending over 10 percent more on travel than in 2024, other companies had begun to pull back.
| What is your company’s expectation for business travel spend in 2025 vs. 2024 | Response Date: Jan/Feb 2025 | Response Date: April 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Up more than 10% | 23% | 24% |
| Up less than 10% | 30% | 19% |
| About the same | 30% | 27% |
| Down less than 10% | 11% | 5% |
| Down more than 10% | 5% | 25% |
The cohort that said they would spend slightly more than in 2024 were down to just 19 percent by April, compared to the original 30 percent. Twenty-seven percent said their budgets would stay steady—a three percentage point drop from earlier this year.
Those who had weaker travel budgets going into 2025 had compounded that weakness by April. While only 5 percent said they would spend slightly less than last year, compared to 11 percent in the first survey, it looks as if that group shifted down into the bottom bucket, where now a full quarter of survey respondents expected travel spend to fall by more than 10 percent from the previous year—that’s five times as many as reported the same from the Jan./Feb. survey.
That said, companies expecting to spend less on travel this year, may have a rougher road ahead in realizing that savings. Though airfares had begun to moderate and even decline on certain routes, increased costs to manufacture and maintain planes will impact the cost airlines pay for them, not to mention disrupting established supply chains for everything from food to lounge furnishings.
