U.S. business travel spending is on the rise this year, it's just not quite as exuberant as earlier forecasts predicted, according to the quarterly report issued Tuesday by the Global Business Travel Association. The scaled-back forecast is due to a decline in average spending per trip, mainly due to business travelers visiting fewer cities per trip, said Michael McCormick, executive director and chief operating officer of the Global Business Travel Association. "We're not sure if it's a trend," McCormick said of the per-trip spending decline, which only started this past quarter. "We don't know if it will continue."
U.S. business travel spending is expected to rise 6.8 percent, to $292.3 billion, in 2014, according to the second-quarter edition of the GBTA Business Travel Index Outlook for the United States, which is sponsored by Visa. In April, the GBTA's quarterly forecast was a more optimistic 7.1 percent, up from January's forecast of 6.6 percent for 2014.
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