Industry metrics and supplier testimony alike in recent months have painted a picture of a return to U.S. business travel demand this year after the malaise and hesitance of much of 2025. But high prices and geopolitical uncertainty have led many companies to keep some reins on demand, maintaining some pre-trip review procedures and limiting some types of travel and excluding certain destinations, according to some in the travel management trenches.
Suppliers in the U.S. and Europe for the first quarter reported varying levels of robust business travel, particularly in the second half of the quarter, boosted by price increases even as war broke out in the Middle East.
As the second quarter comes to a close, there's been no indication from suppliers of any slowdown. On the contrary, American Express Global Business Travel, seemingly in its waning days as a public company, in a June 8 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported quarter-to-date client transaction growth of 6 percent year over year, compared to 3 percent growth in Q1. The travel management company's reported total transaction value in Q2 had increased 15 percent year over year on a constant-currency basis, compared with 9 percent in the first quarter. The disparity between transaction and TTV growth percentages illustrates the rising cost of travel in 2026.
Meanwhile, the number of trips sold by travel agencies with at least 70 percent self-reported corporate and government business and settled by Airlines Reporting Corp. increased year over year in February, March and April, after a stretch in which it declined for 11 out of 13 months, even as average airfare reached four-year highs.
Perhaps most dramatic has been the performance of U.S. hotels, which in 2026 has marked their strongest sustained momentum in two years. After nine straight months of year-over-year decline, U.S. revenue per available room has increased from prior-year levels in each of the first five months of 2026, according to real estate data provider CoStar, parent company of hotel analytics firm STR.
Business travel has been the engine behind U.S. hotels' performance gains in recent weeks. Weekday RevPAR through Thursday, a metric held as shorthand for business travel, from mid-May through mid-June accounted for 97 percent of overall RevPAR gains, STR reported in a research note.
"Recent gains in room demand also point to a continued recovery in business-related travel for U.S. hotels," according to STR, which noted that in the week ending June 6—before FIFA World Cup matches in the U.S. began—weekday RevPAR increased 7.2 percent year over year but declined 1.7 percent on the weekend.
"This growing divergence reinforces that recent demand gains are being driven primarily by business and group travel rather than leisure demand," according to STR. "Supporting this trend, group demand at luxury and upper-upscale hotels increased 6.4 percent last week, reflecting stronger conference-related activity."
Probing the Patterns
That midweek U.S. hotel demand increase is key evidence of a corporate travel rebound, said Lodging Analytics Research & Consulting president and co-founder Ryan Meliker.
"Things were still negative for midweek transient demand in January. It got a little positive in February and then really accelerated in March and April," Meliker said. "Some of that was tied to leisure demand ... but generally speaking, corporate was also strong and it stayed pretty strong, up 4 or 5 percent from a RevPAR perspective."
LARC last year in its U.S. hotel forecasts noted persistent corporate demand weakness, but Meliker said 2026 demand has outstripped projections, and hotels are responding.
"The first five months of the year has been much stronger than I think anybody thought going into the year, certainly a lot stronger than last year," Meliker said. "Pricing is improving. Hotels are getting more aggressive on their pricing."
Meliker suggested many U.S. corporates, some in a travel demand holding pattern since early in 2025, simply have decided to accept any macroeconomic uncertainty as a given and proceed with the activity their business needs to grow.
"Sometime in the first quarter, companies started to get a little numb to all the uncertainty coming out of D.C. today, whether you're talking about tariffs or war with Iran or inflation," Meliker said. "After a year of all that uncertainty, companies looked at their stock prices at effectively all-time highs, corporate profits increasing and plans for expansive capital investment into AI infrastructure and said, we need to go out and generate revenues. And that translates into more corporate transient demand."
Will it last? Probably through the summer, at least, Meliker said. "I don't know that it's throughout the rest of the year. We would say through September and potentially into October," he said. "I think as you get into the midterm elections in early November, that becomes another big factor. We've generally seen that surrounding midterm elections, we see a little bit of pullback."
World Travel Inc. CEO Barbara Barnard, who took the helm of the Exton, Pa.-based TMC on Jan. 1, also said she's seen an uptick in corporate business, she said. "Demand continues to be strong," she said. "We're seeing demand stronger than last year."
WTI's largely midmarket corporate clientele is diverse, Barnard said, and includes everything from pharmaceutical companies to technology to pro sports teams. She cautioned that last year's slowdown was "not across the board," allowing the TMC to "weather those idiosyncrasies that impact a certain type of corporate buyer a little bit better."
Still, she said, those clients that did reduce 2025 travel mostly did so informally, without strict edits from management or formal changes to travel policy, and some clients naturally retain limits on travel to the Middle East, but on the whole reductions have "very much flattened out to increase demand."
Nevertheless, she noted, demand and restrictions retain only a part of the attention of today's travel managers' attention, with changes in airline and hotel distribution, travel platforms and the impact of AI all demanding appreciation.
"All these things are elusive to even some of the most mature buyers and the most sophisticated buyers," Barnard said. "That complexity is something that we're staying really focused on."
Tracie Carillo, SVP of global sales and marketing for Duluth, Ga.-based TMC Travel Inc., said corporate demand thus far in 2026 has proven fairly steady year over year, even in the face of the war and higher prices.
"In the first six months of the year, year over year, we're seeing a pretty consistent trend: not so much up, not so much down," Carillo said. "A lot of that comes from companies that understand that face-to-face is important and they see that return on investment from it. So their booking patterns have been pretty much on track."
There's one exception to that trend, Carillo said: international business travel, which among some companies has declined due to rising airfares, she said. (International airfares in May increased almost 22 percent year over year, according to travel data and analytics firm OAG.)
"Where we're seeing a slight differential, and I think it's expected, is that we're actually seeing fewer international tickets because of higher fares," Carillo said, noting higher fares have not been much of a deterrent for domestic U.S. travel. "There's more scrutiny around the return on the value of that [international] trip: 'Is it necessary? Is it appropriate? Is it the right thing for our business?' "
While Carillo, like Meliker, suggested overall demand could slow in Q4 due to natural business cycles, she cautioned the Middle East conflict could prove a further drag on international demand. "I look at it as the reality of uncertainty," she said. "That's my catchphrase for the year, and it's because one decision can make such an incredible impact."
Partnership Travel Consulting founder and CEO Andrew Menkes, on the other hand, said he did not see current demand as notably higher than last year, and suggested some such demand has been postponed to the third quarter.
"It's less than last year," Menkes said of business travel demand, citing a few reasons: political uncertainty, weaker sentiment toward U.S. travelers in Europe, the recent European heat wave, and companies postponing discretionary trips rather than canceling them outright.
"What probably would have been considered non-essential business travel, they're not pressing the button," he said. "They're going to wait till the fall. ... Q3 should look, I think, a bit stronger than last year, because there's the pent-up demand that's not traveling now."
Menkes warned that many corporations that introduced formal or informal limitations on especially non-revenue-producing business travel, including conference attendance, have declined to lift them in 2026. In fact, rising airfares and the Middle East conflict could spur more companies to introduce them, he said.
To that point, 28 percent of 261 travel buyers surveyed in April by the Global Business Travel Association in April predicted their organization's 2026 business travel volume would decline year over year, up from 16 percent who said so in a similar poll in January. Meanwhile, 30 percent in April said such trips would increase, down from 35 percent in January.
Analyzing Other Data
Other metrics often considered as corporate travel barometers suggest a mixed picture.
- Projected second-quarter U.S. global domestic product forecasts suggest solid economic growth, with projections at press time of 2.7 percent year-over-year growth by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 2.5 percent by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
- The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated the June U.S. unemployment rate would be 4.33 percent, a small increase from the 4.30 percent it recorded for May, suggesting a steady labor market.
- According to preliminary U.S. International Trade Administration data, the total number international visitors to the U.S. who entered on business visas or through the Visa Waiver Program, excluding Canada and Mexico, in May increased 1.4 percent year over year. That's compared to a 6.5 percent decrease in all international visitors to the U.S. in May, again excluding those from Canada and Mexico. Travelers entering the U.S. from Mexico in May on business visas who arrived in manners other than land increased 9 percent year over year.
- Inbound U.S. travel from Canada remains low, continuing a persistent trend in which some Canadians have avoided traveling to their southern neighbor. In May, Canadian residents' return trips from the United States via air declined more than 5 percent year over year and declined 28 percent from May 2024 levels, even as return air trips from other countries increased 3 percent from May 2025, according to Statistics Canada, a Canadian federal government agency.