Resurgence of Business Travel: Four Emerging Themes [Video]

• Business travel has regained momentum, with the global value pool projected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2024.
• Technological solutions create new opportunities in managed and unmanaged business travel sectors.

Ryan Mann, a partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office, highlights four dominant themes shaping the business travel landscape.

The first theme is the solid recovery of business travel after a few uncertain years. The World Travel & Tourism Council recently projected the global value pool for business travel in 2024 to be about $1.5 trillion, an increase of more than 6 percent compared to 2019. In the United States, the expected value is $472 billion, a 13.4 percent increase from 2019. Several factors, such as the need for face-to-face engagement and the predicted increase in meeting spending, contribute to this optimism about the future of business travel.

The second theme is the evolving marketplace for unmanaged business traveland the opportunities it presents for tech solutions. Unmanaged travel refers to situations where employees can book their …