Navigating the future of business travel in Asia
India 8th largest travel market in the world for travel spending in 2024, expected to fully reach pre-2019 spending levels by 2025
The second edition of the FCM Corporate Travel Summit, powered by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), held at the iconic The Leela Palace, Bengaluru concluded on a successful note as travel industry experts brought in fresh perspectives and gave rich and relevant insights into business travel trends, evolving traveller behaviour, technology, and meetings & events.
The day-long event saw meaningful conversations during thought-provoking sessions which covered key topics including navigating the future of business travel in Asia; the power of content in your travel programme; how AI in business travel can transform the end-to-end customer experience, and how tech & innovation drive scalability and experience in meetings & events.
During the summit, centred around the theme “Customer Experience Redefined: Tech Driven, People Focused”, the attendees got an in-depth view of business travel spending in India. As per GBTA’s Business Travel Index (BTI) report, presented by Elle Ng-Darmawan, business travel spending in India stood at an estimated US$38.3 billion, making the country the 8th largest travel market in the world for travel spending in 2024.
“India is in an exciting place right now. The economy is very strong, the corporate earnings have been strong, people want to now have face-to-face meetings. Domestic capacity is almost 13% higher pre-covid, which has changed in last one year. Hotel occupancies are at record levels, almost 68%-69%, talking about the organised sector, with ARRs reaching US$100. I think a lot of positivity is given the strong economic growth and performance by almost all industries,” said Sunny Sodhi, Managing Director, FCM Travel India.
India is the 4th largest market for APAC, representing 6.2% of business travel spending in the region, as per the GBTA report.
“We see the biggest growth coming from the national markets and the SME segment, which has been a big factor for growth in the region. The meetings and events is quite strong in India as well and it’s very clear that this is a segment which is growing steadily,” said Bertrand Saillet, Managing Director, FCM Travel Asia.
Tech also became one of the key discussion points. As per a GBTA survey, 63% of APAC buyers revealed AI was their top priority for 2025, the highest globally.
“We have built an AI Centre of Excellence, which is dedicated to artificial intelligence capabilities with a focus on two main areas-everything related to enabling our people to deliver better and greater service, and the experience we want to deliver to our travellers by pushing the right information at the right time and by letting the travellers know they can engage with us anytime,” said Saillet.
“The outlook for business travel in 2025 is strong and it is said to be a pivotal year as business travel enters its next era. That said, we also need to consider economic developments, travel costs and budget will be a major factor, technological developments, especially AI with the ongoing evolution of sustainability will continue to shape our industry,” said Elle Ng-Darmawan, Regional Director-APAC, GBTA.
The Summit was attended by over 150 key stakeholders, including travel managers and decision-makers.