Report: U.S. business travel market will keep growing and growing

The world may be in a constant state of chaos, but things are nice and calm in the U.S. business travel market, according to a recent report. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), with a little help from corporate sponsor Visa, says that slow and steady growth is all but assured in the coming years, even as other markets fluctuate wildly.

According to the GBTA, all of this means that we'll be seeing more consolidation within the travel industry, after a dramatic run of airlines gobbling one another up and hotel groups swelling due to mergers and acquisitions. "Modest transaction growth, low inflation levels and global uncertainty," it turns out, are a recipe for the business travel industry to merge itself into fewer and fewer enormous key players.

GBTA Executive Director and COO Michael W. McCormick explains:

“The U.S. business travel market is an island of stability in a sea of global volatility. Over the next two years, U.S. business travel spending will grow at just above 3%, but this is largely driven by price, not transaction level increases."

The GBTA Foundation says that growth here at home will be 3.2% in 2016 and 3.5 % in 2017 respectively, to the total of $299.9 billion and $310.4 billion in annual market spending. But don't count on traveling abroad for work. Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are expected to experience a drag on global travel growth, while Europe and the U.S. are expected to continue to rise.

Looking forward, group business travel will continue to be a trend, though a slower-growing one than the individual business travel market. And all of this careful measurement of growth, it should be noted, is predicated on the strength of the dollar and continued depression of oil prices. If those two stalwarts begin to fluctuate, then all bets are off.