Europe’s Hotels Will Wait Until at Least 2025 for Full Return of International Business Guests

Hotels in Europe that rely on international business travelers face a painfully long wait until recovery that could stretch to more than four years.

Domestic and international leisure travel spend is likely to recover by 2022, according to hotel data tracker STR, but its latest forecast shows corporate spend will lag considerably.

“There’s no doubt people want to travel, but the question is will their businesses let them travel,” said managing director Robin Rossmann. “This may seem a little conservative, but we don’t have international business travel recovering by 2024 yet.”

Corporate travel spend, in Europe, will be trailing 2019 numbers for some time yet, based on research conducted with Oxford Economics, which also underpinned STR’s own findings. There’s even a question mark over what year it could come back.