Business travel likely to triple to $93 bn by 2030: Report

With business travel rapidly evolving, India is poised to lead this growth and spending in this category is expected to treble to USD 93 billion by 2030 from the present levels.

"India is now a USD 30 billion business travel market and is expected to more than triple to USD 93 billion by 2030," a white paper on 'Business Travel in India Emerging Trends and Opportunities' by FCM Travel Solutions and KPMG released here today.

KPMG India Partner and Head, Transport, Leisure and Sports, Jaideep Ghosh said, despite some recent economic speed bumps, the business travel market remains incredibly robust and dynamic with a number of countries, such as India, China, Germany and Canada, growing at a remarkable rate.

"The report predicts that India will emerge as a leader in business travel spending over the next decade or so.

In fact, when one looks at India, one sees one of the highest growth rates in business travel in the world. If India continues on that trend, in 15-20 years, it will surpass the US as well and be second only to China. In fact, India is where China was close to 15 years back. It is clearly a story that no one is talking about yet, but it bears watching," he added.

The report is based on business travel booking and expense reporting data from its database of more than 100 corporates and small businesses and 20 users, representing nearly 5 percent of business travel spend in India.

The report revealed that 13 years from now (by 2030), India will likely to be among the top five in business travel spending.

Business travel spending in Asia Pacific totalled USD 458 billion in 2015, and is expected to grow at 7.8 percent annually over the next five years, 6.5 percent of this total spend came from India, while China, Japan and South Korea accounted for nearly 90 percent of the remaining spends, it said.

The report further said, Indian travellers are most likely to be transacting on their smart phones as this region has consistently led the charge with smart phone usage growing at 12 percent from 2014 to 2015.