Business Travel on the Rise
After a three-year long decline, business travel is expected to increase ever so slightly — 0.4 percent annually — in 2008, according to a Travel Industry Association forecast released October 24.
The report offers data for 2000 through 2006 and projections for 2007 through 2010, and the forecast predicts that business travel will increase another 0.6 percent in 2009 and 2.7 percent in 2010, achieving predicted total annual profits of $US518.2 billion. While this new rise in the business travel market is promising and positive, the market still has a ways to go to touch the $566.6 billion annual pull it had in 2000.
According to the report, business travel declined each year from 2000 through 2007, except in 2004, when it increased by 2.2 percent.
Business travel, on the whole though, isn’t going anywhere. According to the findings of technology expert Tim Bajarin the days when videoconferencing will take over corporate voyages are still a decade away.
