HOTELMARKETING.COM

GBTA report predicts business travel spend increase across all Europe in 2013

June 13, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

The new report found that economic growth across Europe will be constrained in 2012 with weakness in the first half giving way to improving prospects later in the year. Increasing economic growth in Germany, France and the UK will be offset by declines in many Southern European economies.

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), the world’s premier business travel and corporate meetings organization, announces the results of its inaugural “GBTA Business Travel Index (BTI) Outlook – Western Europe” economic analysis, sponsored by Visa Inc.

This semi-annual series includes the GBTA BTI which provides a method for distilling market performance and the outlook for business travel into a single metric to be tracked over time. “GBTA BTI Outlook – Western Europe” includes an analysis of the five most critical business travel markets in Europe: Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain.

Highlights

- Growth in business travel spending (“BTS”) in the three major European economies: Germany, the UK and France will be nearly flat in 2012: UK is forecast to grow BTS by 0.7% , Germany is forecast to grow BTS by 0.6%, French BTS is forecast to decline by 0.6%

- Forecast levels of 2012 BTS in Germany, UK and France all exhibit growth in domestic travel, but declines in international outbound spending (“IOB”): UK domestic BTS is forecast to grow by 2.7% but IOB is forecast to fall by 2.8%, German domestic BTS is forecast to grow by 1.1% but IOB is forecast to fall by 1.4%, French domestic BTS is forecast to grow by 0.7% but IOB is forecast to fall by 2.7%

- Growth levels in 2013 BTS in Germany, the UK and France will be much stronger with both domestic BTS and IOB showing increases: Germany is forecast to grow overall BTS by 5.4%, France is forecast to grow overall BTS by 5.1%, The UK is forecast to grow overall BTS by 4.0%

- Southern European countries, Spain and Italy will experience even steeper declines in BTS due to slower economic growth rates and austerity measures. 2012 is forecast to see declines of 4.1% and 5.0% for Spain and Italy, respectively

- Overall, the European economic situation will weigh heavily on countries’ economic growth levels. In 2012, GDP in Germany, France and the UK are forecast to grow by 0.5%, 0.6% and 0.7% respectively. This will be due more to the indirect impact of Southern Europe rather than domestic weaknesses

- Sovereign debt crises in Italy and Spain will lead to 1.8% and 1.9% declines in 2012 GDP, respectively

Get the full story at GBTA

Visit our sponsors: