UK travel buyers are set to have a good year in 2013, as the travel industry is not expecting a decline in business.
AirPlus International Inc, a company that provides a suite of business travel payment solutions, has conducted a survey that reported that 64 percent of British travel buyers expect the number of trips to be the same as last year, while 28 percent believe that travel may increase. Only 7 percent of survey respondents are expecting a decline in travel.
Around 45 percent of UK buyers believe that spending on travel will remain flat in 2013, while 38 percent expect it to increase, and 15 percent are predicting a decrease in expenditure.
Most UK travel managers are also expecting an increase in their accommodation bill, much more than for flights. Around 44 percent of managers believe that the cost of travel accommodation will be increasing in 2013, compared to 40 percent who believed hotel room costs would stay constant. 41 percent of those surveyed believe that air travel costs will rise in 2013. Around 36 percent of travel managers believe that more rooms will be booked by British corporate travellers in 2013, while 52 percent thought that booking levels would stay the same.
Yael Klein, the managing director of Airplus UK, said, ‘I believe that a stable business travel market should definitely been seen in a positive light. Many other large European business travel markets, including France, Italy and Spain, predict spending to go down, albeit marginally.
As business travel spend seems to point quite consistently to the state of the national economy, we would hope this is therefore a good indication for the outlook of our economy over the next 12 months.’
