INDIA 10TH LARGEST BUSINESS TRAVEL MARKET: GBTA
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The GBTA Foundation, the education and research arm of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) – announced the results of its first GBTA BTI™ Outlook – India report, a semi-annual business travel outlook and overall economic analysis of India. The report, sponsored by Visa Inc., includes the GBTA BTI™; an index of business travel spending that distils market performance over a period of time.
“This forecast is a very positive sign for the potential of business travel growth in India in the years to come. The recent landslide victory of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party in India’s May elections have renewed optimism for more pro-business reforms and accelerated infrastructure investment. Winning 282 or 543 parliamentary seats appears to have given Modi and the BJP a mandate to repeat this success across India. Even incremental success in these efforts should eventually spark greater economic and business travel growth,” said Welf Ebeling, GBTA Vice President, Operations for Asia Pacific.
The report highlighted that, after a period of economic growth stuck below 5 per cent along with soaring inflation, GBTA projects total business travel spending for India to grow 2.1 per cent in 2014 to US$ 24.9 billion. An improved outlook for the Indian economy, however, should bring business travel spend back on track in 2015 as GBTA expects 7.6 per cent growth to US$28.8 billion.
The report further stated that, over the last 15 years, India has worked its way up the rankings of major global business travel markets from number 24 in 2000 to the 10th ranked market in the world in 2013. GBTA expects India will continue to move up the rankings and should pass Italy to become the 9th largest market in the next five years.
Driven by both the tremendous growth of the middle class and size and multitude of business centres throughout India, domestic business travel spending has dominated, comprising 90 percent of total business travel spend in the country. Along with the ailing domestic economy, domestic business travel spend is expected to slow in 2014 only growing 2.2 percent. Thanks in part to the recent election results providing a boost in business and investor confidence, domestic business travel spend will regain its footing in 2015 advancing 7.7 percent to US$ 24.2 billion.
International outbound business travel spending has been extremely volatile in recent years and is only expected to gain 1.1 percent in 2014. It too will see major improvement in 2015 though as GBTA projects 7 percent growth to $2.6 billion USD due to renewed strength among India’s major trading partners including China, Europe and the United States, the report concluded.