Corporate Travel Buyers Are Bullish on 2026 Budgets, But a New Worry Is Creeping In

Corporate travel managers are heading into 2026 with more money to spend, but far less certainty about how smoothly that money will move people across borders.

That's the picture that emerges from the Global Business Travel Association's latest industry poll, released in late January and based on responses from 571 corporate travel buyers, suppliers and travel management company professionals spanning 40 countries. The headline number is reassuring for an industry that has spent the past few years bracing for the next shock: 84% of buyers expect their organization's business travel spending in 2026 to either increase or hold steady at 2025 levels. Of those anticipating growth, the average expected bump is 12%.

Dig one layer deeper, though, and the optimism gets more complicated. Only 59% of the professionals GBTA surveyed said they feel optimistic about the industry this year, and that figure represents a 12-percentage-point drop compared with where sentiment stood heading into 2025. Nearly a third of respondents describe their outlook as neutral, sitting on the fence rather than committing to either confidence or dread.

"The results show an industry propelled by anticipated stronger demand and financial indicators, yet potentially constrained by external factors that could reshape business travel in the year ahead," said Suzanne Neufang, GBTA's chief executive. "Traveling for work is critical to how global companies and economies grow, innovate and connect. We need to ensure it remains accessible, safe, and seamless — and that every trip counts."

The poll, conducted online from January 5 to January 18, paints a business travel picture that is growing again but growing carefully. Trip volumes are expected to hold roughly steady for nearly half of buyers, with just over a third anticipating an actual increase in the number of trips their employees take this year. Among that group forecasting more travel, the average expected rise in trip volume comes in at 14%. Meanwhile, 42% of travel managers expect the number of employees traveling for business to grow in some capacity, though a third of those expect that growth to stay under 10%.

Travel suppliers and TMCs, for their part, are even more upbeat about their own revenue prospects than the buyers who write the checks. Nearly half, 47%, expect revenue increases in 2026, with an average anticipated gain of 15%. But that optimism isn't universal across the supply chain — North American suppliers were the least likely of any region to predict growth, with 38% expecting an increase and 46% projecting revenue to hold flat.

Money is not the only thing keeping travel buyers up at night. When GBTA asked what worries them most heading into the year, affordability topped the list at 70%, followed closely by the ease of obtaining entry and exit permissions and visas at 65%, and employee safety at 56%. Those numbers were even more pronounced among U.S.-based buyers specifically, where affordability concerns hit 76% and worries about entry and exit permissions came in at 57%.

That visa anxiety isn't abstract. The poll flagged proposed changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, the online system that governs entry for travelers from 42 countries that currently don't need a visa to visit the U.S. Under consideration are mandatory disclosures of long-term social media activity, contact and family information, along with the possibility of biometric selfies and a process that would only run through a mobile app. For an industry that depends on predictable, low-friction movement of employees across borders, that kind of overhaul is unsettling.

Among organizations that frequently send employees to the U.S., three in four buyers said they are either very or somewhat concerned about the proposed ESTA changes. European travel professionals were particularly uneasy about the privacy implications, with two-thirds saying their employees would simply rather skip the trip than hand over that level of personal information. The ripple effects show up in planning decisions, too. A meaningful share of respondents said their companies are now more likely to hold meetings outside the U.S. altogether, decrease near-term travel to the country, or actively rewrite travel policies to limit U.S.-bound trips.

Cost control remains the other persistent headache. Three-quarters of travel buyers expect their overall 2026 operational budgets for managing travel programs to increase or stay flat, but 18% are actually bracing for a decrease. U.S. buyers in particular flagged program cost savings as a bigger concern than their counterparts elsewhere, with 74% citing it compared to 62% outside the U.S. On the supplier side, the belt-tightening shows up as reduced marketing spend, hiring freezes and, in some cases, outsourcing work to vendors instead of keeping it in-house.

Artificial intelligence continues to work its way into how these programs run, even if nobody is expecting it to upend the industry overnight. Pricing optimization and predictive analytics topped the list of AI priorities for 2026, cited by 65% and 64% of respondents respectively. Buyers say AI's biggest impact right now is improving internal data analysis and automating reporting, rather than replacing human judgment in the booking process. Looking five years out, more than half of respondents expect AI to deliver moderate improvements to how travel programs operate, while a smaller share, 27%, expect something more transformative.

There's also a generational and regional split in how AI is being embraced. Interest in AI-driven dynamic pricing and predictive tools runs meaningfully higher outside the U.S., at 69%, compared with 59% domestically. And concerns about AI-enabled scams targeting business travelers are a bigger worry outside the U.S. as well, at 36%, versus just 14% among American buyers.

Taken together, the poll suggests an industry that has largely made peace with a slower, steadier growth trajectory after the turbulence of the pandemic recovery years. Nobody in the survey is predicting a boom. But nobody is predicting a bust, either. What they are predicting is friction: friction at the border, friction in balancing traveler satisfaction against tightening budgets, and friction in figuring out how much to trust AI tools that are still relatively new to corporate travel programs.

For hotels, airlines and travel management companies serving corporate clients, the poll offers a useful signal amid a lot of noise. Demand isn't disappearing. If anything, it's inching upward across most measures GBTA tracks. But the buyers footing the bill are watching costs, watching borders, and watching Washington more closely than they have in years — and that vigilance is likely to shape how, when and where business travel actually happens in 2026, regardless of what the topline spending numbers suggest.