Dive Brief:
- Resurging business travel in the U.S. has generated a “significant economic impact” in recent years, according to the Global Business Travel Association. A new study found that in 2022 — the latest full year with a complete data set available for analysis — for every $1 spent on business travel, $1.15 was returned to the U.S. economy as net-new gross domestic product.
- The study, titled “GBTA U.S. Economic Impact Study: Business Travel’s Impact on Jobs and the U.S. Economy,” also found that for every 1% of growth in business travel, the U.S. economy sees nearly 60,000 jobs, $2.9 billion in paid wages, $1.2 billion in tax revenue and $4.8 billion in new GDP.
- At hotels, domestic business travel supported hundreds of thousands of jobs in 2022 and drove a significant number of overnight stays, according to GBTA. The association forecasts U.S. business travel spending will continue to increase in 2024.
Dive Insight:
The business travel industry “provided a major boost” to the U.S. economy in 2022, to the tune of $484 billion in total GDP, according to GBTA.
The industry also directly supported 3.2 million jobs in the year, representing roughly 2% of total U.S. non-farm employment in 2022. Some 601,204 of those jobs were in the accommodations sector.
Job growth in the accommodations sector continued throughout 2023. And, in March, the American Hotel and Lodging Association forecasted that demand for U.S. hotel industry jobs over the next five years will outpace overall market job growth. However, industry employment has not yet fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Domestic business travel also drove overnight stays at hotels in 2022, GBTA found. According to the study, more than half (55%) of business trips taken in the U.S. in 2022 included an overnight stay, and the majority (76%) of business travel stays were in a hotel, motel or bed and breakfast.
Heightened group business demand, specifically, resulted in gross operating profit and total RevPAR growth at hotels in markets including New York City and Dallas in 2023. Group business fully recovered in 20 U.S. markets in the year as well, according to Knowland and Amadeus.
Although GBTA does not have data available beyond 2022, the association estimated that U.S. business travel spending for 2023 increased roughly 7% from 2019 totals, “indicating a robust recovery for the industry.” GBTA forecasts that, on a global scale, business travel spending will surpass $1.5 trillion in 2024. Earlier this month, Morning Consult predicted the U.S. sector will reach its pre-pandemic volume levels in 2025.
In 2022, the top U.S. states for business travel destination spending were California, New York, Florida, Texas and Georgia, according to the GBTA study.
Last month, Cvent named Orlando, Florida, the top meetings destination in North America out of 50 markets.
