As buyers and suppliers alike look for signals to divine corporate travel trends in 2026, it seems clear that the demand slowdown that began in this year's first quarter hasn't fully abated among companies leery of macroeconomic uncertainty and the effect of economic policy, including tariffs.
Any prolonged slowdown would affect supplier pricing strategies in 2026, and a few forecasters already have projected only limited rate increases next year amid steady or slowly recovering demand.
The reasons for the persistent demand shakiness are well-established, according to observers: many companies have limited some spending, including travel, until more clarity is reached on the rounds of tariffs implemented and sometimes delayed by the United States. An additional wrinkle for multinational companies is the potential reluctance of some travelers to come to the U.S. for business, and year-to-date arrivals through July on business visas has declined.
"Markets historically absolutely loathe uncertainty, and that's certainly where we are," Goldspring Consulting partner Will Tate said this month during a BTN Intelligence News Desk panel. "Geopolitical concerns, the tariffs up and down and all of that creates a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. … Almost always, the leading indicator of anxiety in markets is cutting of travel, so you see that happen directly that affects everyone."
Tate suggested most corporations that are limiting travel are doing so informally, constraining individual trips based on market conditions. "The tariff situation has been in flux—it's postponed, and OK, that means business as usual. Well, then it's not postponed, and now we have a hard line, and it's not business as usual. So that informality is taking a lot of scrutiny around some of the more expensive business trips that perhaps in the past wouldn't have been scrutinized quite as deeply."
Grant Caplan, president of corporate travel and meetings procurement consulting firm Procurigence, during the News Desk said some overseas clients were avoiding the United States as a meetings destination, looking instead at Canada or Europe, due not only to economic uncertainty but also concerns about the inbound visitation process, noting high-profile reports of inbound detainees.
"You're seeing a lot of contradictions, and we're seeing some of that in our clients' business also where they might have a stomach for this but they don't have a stomach for that," Caplan said. "We try and quell fears and make people feel comfortable, but obviously we can't guarantee anything, and nobody can. Things change very quickly, and the trust is difficult to build back after. It takes a short amount of time to destroy it. It takes a lot longer to build it back."
Caplan and Tate agreed that larger companies remain more likely to limit travel spending than small and midsize firms, with the latter group generally perhaps less exposed to the financial ramifications of the tariff twists and turns.
Meanwhile, the Global Business Travel Association in its annual Business Travel Index Outlook, issued last month, projected 2025 global business travel spending to increase about 6.6 percent year over year, shy of last year's forecast. Jon Gray, principal of Rockport Analytics, the market research form that helped GBTA develop the BTI, noted during a session at GBTA's annual convention last month in Denver that the lowered forecast comes at a time of continued global macroeconomic strength and low unemployment.
"We're seeing inflation come down, we're seeing employment stay very strong. This is really a Goldilocks scenario for the global economy," Gray said. "The key vector that is really driving this underperformance or this adjustment to our expectations around growth is what's happening with tariffs and with trade policy. … We all hope that there's a little bit more certainty so that businesses can act and understand what tariff rates are going to be and can run their businesses accordingly."
2026 Implications
A few forecasters have issued projections for 2026 business travel pricing, with a consensus that steady or slowly growing demand won't allow suppliers to drive significant increases.
Travel management company CWT and GBTA projected year-over-year increases in 2026 global airfares and hotel rates of 0.4 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. American Express Global Business Travel projected 2026 hotel rates would increase only moderately from 2025 levels, and hotel analytics firm STR and Tourism Economics forecast the 2026 U.S. average daily hotel rate to increase 1 percent year over year.
"I think [suppliers] will have to moderate," Goldspring's Tate said. "This uncertainty really impacts every single space. …. As long as that uncertainty exists, I think you're going to have real trouble getting pricing up."
Procurigence's Caplan said that "we see weakening, and anytime people are unsure, then there's going to be some movement that you didn't experience before. … We're seeing in 2026 some better pricing already, and we're seeing that sourcing is yielding some improvements that even we didn't expect that are advantageous to the buyer. And I think it'll have to be that way until things change and we get back up on our track."
Rockport's Gray at the GBTA session said the Trump administration's current negotiations with other countries around tariffs and trade will have significant effects on business travel demand and supplier strategy in 2026 and beyond.
"We are starting to stabilize the global economy by most measures. It's doing extremely well," Gray said. "But I think what happens with trade is really going to dictate where we head in terms of business travel spending over the next couple of years. I think there is some optimism that this could lead to negotiations where we have more clarity around trade and we have fairer deals around the world, but it might not, and there's certainly a lot of uncertainty about the way things are going to break with the current administration."
The results of those negotiations, Gray said, could alter business travel demand in a few ways.
"If we do end up with sky-high tariff rates in some markets, obviously we're going to see shifting of supply chains, whether those are domestic supply chains or whether they're moving to different markets," he said." And so those shifting supply chains are going to have implications about where business travelers are going to support those supply chains."