Business travel this year may hit (or exceed) pre-pandemic levels

Finance teams ought to prepare for a deluge of gas, dinner, and coffee receipts for reimbursements, because it looks like corporate travel expenses may soon reach (or even exceed) pre-pandemic levels.

“By the end of 2024, US-based companies’ spend is expected to reach and perhaps surpass 2019 levels,” according to a new Deloitte report. The firm surveyed business travelers, travel managers, and budget owners in May and June, and found that corporate expenses could swell between 8% and 12% this year.

Nearly three in four (73%) travel managers said their companies’ travel spend will grow this year, and 58% expect spend will grow again in 2025. Their average growth expectations are 14%–15% for both years. This may create some headaches for the roughly one-fifth of CFOs who cited cost management as a top three priority for this year and next, per a recent Gartner survey.

Deloitte experts observed that since the expected bump in travel expenses is greater than the Conference Board’s projected 2.1% GDP increase this year, business travel is likely a “still-recovering industry.”

An obvious consequence of the increase in spending is that business travelers expect they’ll be on the road more often this year than in 2023. According to the Deloitte survey, 15% of travelers took between six and 10 trips in 2023, and 7% said they took more than 10 trips. This year, 20% of business travelers expected to take six to 10 trips, and 10% were slated for more than 10s.

Large-scale events like conferences, exhibitions, and trade shows “are playing a big role in travel growth,” according to the report. More than 60% of respondents said they expected to attend at least one such event this year. Fewer travelers, meanwhile, said they planned to travel for project work or sales. Even so, those trips are “responsible for considerably more frequency,” according to Deloitte.