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According to the new reports of the travel and expenditure forum, corporations continue to spend on trade travel, but are getting strategic about how they allocate those dollars amidst ongoing business uncertainties. Navan And this Global Business Travel Association,
According to a trade trip index published from Nawan on Tuesday, the activity of corporate travel spending increased in the second quarter of 2025 to 15% year.
The index of NAVAN supported by Nasdaq is derived from millions of corporate trade transactions on its platform. The airline checks the amount and number of transactions related to transactions from hotel reservation and corporate cards.
Amy Batte, the CFO of Navan, said during an interview that talking to other Chief Financial Officers in the last few months, he never understood that the corporate leaders would stop spending entirely on business travel. Instead, they are in “Waiting and see” mode.
“If you are making an option about where you are being alert, we are not seeing alert in the field of relationship building, either with our customers or with your peers. We are still looking at the expenses allocated towards the journey as a major component of any professional strategy,” Battte said.
According to Monday’s report by the Global Business Travel Association, the global trade journey is expected to reach a new level of $ 1.57 trillion in 2025, which represents a total of 6.6% year-to-year growth, which is already under the estimated 10.4%. GBTA cited trade tension, policy uncertainty and economic pressures as the reasons for more liberal development.
A string of emotion elections by GBTA also shows that corporate travel optimism for the remaining 2025 appears to be silent. The percentage of respondents who said that they were optimistic about the overall approach to the trade travel industry in 2025, falling from 67% to 31% in April 2024 to 31% in April and decreased again to 28% in this month.
Conclusions of both reports, with the comment of the CEO of the airline last week, the show C-suit leaders have still been left largely quite largely in the chairman of the weight-end mode to a large extent. Donald Trump‘S Fluid tariff policiesBut companies now read a better on how they will manage uncertainty.
“Historically, corporate travel has been the first thing, one of the easiest things, if you are a company, at least,” Delta air lines CEO Ed Bustian This month, during the company’s earnings call, the corporate journey on the airline has been flat on a year-long basis.
But Batte said that Nawan has not seen a decline in trade journey. Instead, businesses are shifted to how they are spending.
For example, Batte said that instead of spending on the outing of the larger group, businesses continue for personal, face-to-face meetings. The Nawan Index suggests that spending on personal food, which means one meeting during the meal, was 9.8% above last year, while the team spent on the events and food was the only category in the report that declined.
Nawan had seen some compression in the first year, which was bought a high -priced airline tickets which were first class or business classes, but said that the forum has seen an acceleration since then because uncertainty has reduced.
Air fare prices This year has been refused so far, which means that business and consumers are equally spending less on airplane tickets. Airfare fell 3.5% in June a year ago in June Overall inflationAccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
GBTA CEO Suzanne Nepang said during an interview that the CFO has not completely cut the journey expenses, but is looking for efficient methods to get employees on the road. He said that this may seem like booking multicity trips, schedule of many meetings per travel or booking less trips per month.
Nepang said that the trade travel industry is focused in the last five years, ensuring that every trip has an objective and defends the return to investment.
“They are the days when the trivial business is traveling,” Nefang said.
Airline officials weigh
There are also new conclusions at the business travel expenses as the airlines are reporting their quarterly earnings.
When delta Informed earnings On July 10, Bastian said that he hoped that both consumer and corporate belief would improve the second half of the year, which would create an atmosphere to speed up the demand for travel.
Delta and Other airlines The demand for seen travel becomes more weaker than expected at the beginning of the year, especially the price-sensitive customers travel domestic. Bustian said in April that Trump had trade policies Booking hurt,
Bastian took more positive tone this month, Telling CNBC That corporate journey has been stabilized as businesses have more clarity and confidence earlier this year. But he said that the corporate journey is corresponding to the previous year, not 5% to 10% increase at the beginning of the year is not expected.
Meanwhile, the President of the Delta Glenn Henstein said on an earning call this month that the trends of the corporate journey are “tempering” and the overall corporate volume is expected to be “flat” compared to last year.
United Airlines Income was reported last week. CEO Scott Kirby said during the company’s call with analysts that so far this month, the airline has seen acceleration in double digits in demand for trade as uncertainty has declined.
United Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nokela said that the growth of trade traffic is “across the board” and is not limited to any eccentric hub or vertical, which he said that macroeconomic uncertainty is reflected by reducing uncertainty.
Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines And American Airlines This week is scheduled to report its quarterly results.
