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According to a new report from the Global Business Travel Association and Travel and Expense Platform Navan, businesses continue to spend on business trips, but are strategic about how these dollars will be allocated amid on the ongoing trade uncertainty.
According to the Business Travel Index issued by Navan, corporate travel spending activity rose 15% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2025.
Nasdaq-backed Navan’s indexes are derived from millions of corporate business transactions on its platform. Find out the amount of costs and number of transactions related to airline travel, hotel bookings, and cost transactions from corporate cards.
Navan CFO Amy Butte said in an interview that after talking to other Chief Financial Officers over the past few months, he has not felt that corporate leaders would be halting their spending on business trips entirely. Instead, they are in “wait and see” mode.
“If you’re choosing where you’re being cautious, you don’t see people becoming more cautious in the area of building relationships with customers and teammates. We’re still looking at the spending allocated to travel as a key component of any business strategy,” Butte said.
However, a report from the World Business Travel Association on Monday shows that global business trips are expected to reach a new high of $1.57 trillion in 2025, representing a 6.6% year-on-year growth. The GBTA cited trade tensions, policy uncertainty and economic pressures as reasons for more moderate growth.
A series of sentimental votes by the GBTA also show that optimism for the rest of the business trip for 2025 appears to be muted. The percentage of respondents who said they were optimistic about the overall outlook for the business travel industry in 2025 fell sharply from 67% in November 2024 to 31% in April, falling slightly to 28% this month.
Findings from both reports, grouped together with commentary from the airline’s CEO last week, show that C-Suite leaders are still mostly in standby mode amid President Donald Trump’s liquid tariff policy, but it appears that businesses are now reading better on how to manage uncertainty.
“Historically, corporate travel is the first and one of the easiest things to keep to a minimum if you’re a company.” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian added in the company’s revenue call this month that airlines’ corporate travel has remained flat year-on-year.
But Butte said Naban had not seen dropping out of business trips. Instead, businesses are changing the way they spend.
Butte, for example, said businesses continue to commit to in-person meetings, rather than spending large group outings. The Navan index shows that spending on team events and meals is the only category of reduced reports, while spending on personal meals, meaning one-on-one meetings via meals, has increased by 9.8% from last year.
Navan saw some compression at the beginning of the year with a share of tickets for more expensive airlines that are first or business class, butte said, but added that she saw acceleration as the platform reduced uncertainty.
Airfares this year have also decreased so far. This means that businesses and consumers alike spend less on plane tickets. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, airfares fell 3.5% in June from a year ago, but overall inflation rose.
Suzanne Neufang, CEO of GBTA, said in an interview that CFOs have not completely reduced their travel spending, but are looking for an efficient way to navigate their employees. This could look like a multi-city trip booking, multiple meeting schedules per trip, or a trip booking per month, she said.
Neufang said the business travel industry has confirmed that all travel has purpose over the past five years and has achieved a return on investment.
“There’s no longer a time when there’s really frivolous business trips,” Neufan said.
Airline executive weight
New research into travel spending is also generated as airlines report quarterly revenue.
Delta time Reporting revenues on July 10, Bastian said he expects confidence for both consumers and businesses to improve later in the year, and expects it to create an environment where travel demand will accelerate.
Delta and other airlines saw travel demand weaker than expected at the start of the year, particularly from price-sensitive customers traveling domestically. Bastian said in April that Trump’s trade policy was hurting bookings.
Bastian gained a more positive tone this month, telling CNBC that corporate travel is stable as the companies are more clear and confident than they did earlier this year. However, he said that corporate travel was in line with last year, not the 5% to 10% growth delta expected at the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, Delta president Glenn Hauenstein said in a revenue call this month that the trend in corporate travel is “cuttered” and that the overall company is expected to be “flat” last year.
United Airlines Revenue reported last week. CEO Scott Kirby said in a call with the company’s analysts that he saw double-digit acceleration in business demand as airlines have lost uncertainty so far this month.
Andrewnocera, United’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, added that business traffic growth is not “overall” limited to singular hubs or verticals.
Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines We plan to report quarterly results this week.
