Business travel in China continues to grow: world’s largest market

October 18, 2017

SHANGHAI - The CITS American Express Global Business Travel 2017 China Business Travel Survey (the Barometer) has revealed that 31% of Chinese companies expect travel budgets to rise over the next 12 months. The figure reflects increasing business confidence, as only 17% of respondents predicted budget increases when asked the same question last year.

Forty percent of organisations have reported plans to expand budgets because of opportunities presented by the Belt and Road initiative..

Last year, China became the country with the largest business travel expenditure in the world, overtaking the United States.

Despite 75% of China's business travel spend being domestic, its increasingly outward-looking approach to global commerce is likely to create opportunities for international business travel in future.

China's Belt and Road Initiative is one example of a major investment project that could benefit Chinese organszations with an international travel programme (43% of companies), as well as those with a regional programme (21% of companies), the report said

This year's Barometer highlighted the importance of business travel as a key driver of revenue for many Chinese organisations, with 90% reporting that increased client-facing travel would likely increase revenue.

Additionally, more than half of the respondents (53%) believe an increase in client-related travel would improve overall revenue by 10-20%. Developing new business relationships and maintaining existing clients were listed as the top two reasons for business travel.

Beyond simply acknowledging the value of business travel to overall company bottom line, most of Chinese organisations also reported having systems in place to measure the return on investment (ROI) of business travel.

Forty one percent of organisations currently track the level of business travel expenditure required to sign a new business deal on a monthly basis. More than half of companies also claimed to measure business travel ROI by linking business travel spend to company revenue, reviewing T&E programmes with C-level management, regularly aligning the travel programme with business strategy, and linking business travel spend to converting prospects or maintaining client relationships.

Almost half of the respondents (46%) in this year's Barometer say their company could save 10-20% of their total travel budget from better budget management. Twenty percent of larger companies also stated they are likely to replace close to half of all internal meetings with video or teleconferencing within the next year.  www.citsgbt.com    amexglobalbusinesstravel.com