Now This Isn’t Good

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is projecting that the United States will lose $1.3 billion in overall travel-related expenditures, including hotels, food, rental cars and shopping expenses that inbound travellers would have spent.

That figure includes $250 million lost in spending from inbound business travellers from Europe and the Middle East.

And the GBTA says that the even greater concern is that the longer-term impact on business travel will become even larger as companies begin to host meetings and events in other destinations.

Using first quarter ticketing data from the Airlines Reporting Corp. (ARC), publicly available travel data and its own economic research and models, the GBTA developed an “uncertainty forecast” for 2017 showing the impact this mounting geopolitical uncertainty is having on the economy; making it clear that there is no question that uncertainty is bad for business travel and bad for the global economy.

In an earlier survey of GBTA’s European members, 45% indicated their company will be less willing to plan future meetings and events in the United States due to executive orders on travel.

U.S. GDP will take a nearly $300 million hit. More than 4,200 jobs could be lost along with $175 million in wages and $70 million in tax collections.

Europe is forecast to lose over $250 million in air fare spending and the Middle East will lose over $80 million in air fare.

What’s worse, the GBTA notes, is that this devastating economic impact could take years to recover from.

For more, go to http://www.gbta.org .