Business travel is being rewired. Are hotels ready?

In Chicago, during the latest edition of GBTA | Global Business Travel Association Convention, I had the opportunity to spend time with clients, TMCs, technology partners, industry experts and our own Minor Hotels GSO teams in the US.

I came back with many notes.

But one sentence stayed with me.

“Business travel has never experienced the level of disruption it is experiencing today.”

And the second part was even more interesting:

In the past, technology was the limitation. Today, technology is the enabler.

I think that captures perfectly where our industry is right now.

Business travel is not simply recovering.

It is being redesigned.

The numbers still matter

The latest GBTA Business Travel Index points to a market that continues to grow.

Global business travel spending reached around $1.59 trillion in 2025 and is expected to reach approximately $1.71 trillion in 2026.

By 2030, it could exceed $2 trillion.

So no, business travel is not disappearing.

But underneath those numbers, something much more interesting is happening.

In 2026, spending is expected to grow around 7.2%.

The number of trips?

Only around 1.3%.

That gap tells us a lot.

The next phase of business travel will not simply be about more trips.

It will be about more valuable trips.

Business travel is becoming intentional

One of the strongest messages from my conversations in Chicago was that companies are becoming much more selective about why people travel.

A routine internal meeting can happen on Teams.

A status update can happen on Zoom.

But some moments remain very difficult to replicate digitally.

Winning a major client.

Launching a strategic project.

Implementing new technology.

Training teams.

Negotiating complex agreements.

Building trust.

Solving difficult problems together.

Those are very different kinds of trips.

And increasingly, companies are asking a simple question before approving travel:

What is the return of putting these people in the same room?

That changes the value equation completely.

And then there is AI

There is an interesting contradiction emerging around artificial intelligence.

The obvious assumption has been:

More AI → more virtual collaboration → less travel.

But the opposite may be happening, at least in the short and medium term.

AI is creating enormous amounts of business activity.

New implementations.

Consulting projects.

Training.

Data centers.

Technology partnerships.

International projects.

Client meetings.

Transformation programs.

All of those activities create reasons for people to travel.

Technology may replace some meetings.

But it also creates entirely new reasons to meet.

That is why I increasingly believe that AI will not simply reduce business travel.

It will change the purpose of business travel.

Technology used to be the constraint

This was probably my biggest takeaway from Chicago.

For many years, the evolution of business travel was constrained by technology.

Booking systems were fragmented.

Payments were complicated.

Corporate policies were rigid.

Data arrived late.

Traveler experiences were disconnected.

Personalization was limited.

Today, many of those barriers are disappearing.

AI, mobile platforms, integrated payments, real-time data and increasingly intelligent travel platforms are making completely new experiences possible.

That changes the question.

The challenge is no longer:

“Can technology do it?”

Increasingly, the question is:

“What should we redesign now that technology can?”

That is a much more interesting problem.

The traditional travel stack is being challenged

Another theme I heard repeatedly in Chicago was that the traditional boundaries between different parts of the travel ecosystem are becoming less clear.

TMC.

OBT.

Hotel.

Airline.

Payment provider.

Expense platform.

Technology company.

Loyalty program.

For years, travelers moved between these different layers.

Now platforms are trying to connect them.

The ambition is obvious:

one traveler, one journey, one connected experience.

And this is where I believe the next major competitive battle in business travel will happen.

Not only around inventory.

Around friction.

Whoever removes the most friction from the business travel experience will create enormous value.

What does this mean for hotels?

I think it requires a change in mindset.

For years, the hotel industry has largely thought about corporate travel through rooms, rates and negotiated accounts.

Those things remain important.

But they are no longer enough.

The real question is becoming:

How can a hotel make an important business trip more successful?

That opens a much broader conversation.

Location.

Connectivity.

Flexible working environments.

Meeting spaces.

Food.

Wellness.

Sleep.

Technology.

Payments.

Recognition.

Loyalty.

Speed.

And increasingly, personalization.

The hotel becomes part of the productivity infrastructure of the trip.

That is a very different way of thinking about the corporate traveler.

Revenue Management will also need to evolve

There is another implication hidden in the data.

If travel volumes grow slowly but spending grows significantly faster, pricing becomes even more important.

But I do not think the opportunity is simply to charge more.

The opportunity is to understand when willingness to pay increases because the purpose of the trip matters more.

A traveler attending an important negotiation does not behave exactly like someone attending an internal meeting.

A project team staying for five nights is different from an individual traveler staying one night.

A traveler combining work and personal time behaves differently again.

The more we understand context and purpose, the more sophisticated pricing and personalization can become.

This is where Revenue Management and AI will increasingly intersect.

Sales will have to sell something different

Another conclusion from Chicago:

We need to sell fewer rooms.

And sell more business outcomes.

Productivity.

Convenience.

Access.

Collaboration.

Flexibility.

Recognition.

Less friction.

The best corporate sales conversations will increasingly move away from:

“What rate can you give me?”

toward:

“How can we make travel work better for our people?”

That requires a much more consultative approach.

And it also creates a much stronger relationship between hotels, corporations, TMCs and technology partners.

The paradox of business travel

So we arrive at what I think is the central paradox.

Companies will probably question travel more than ever.

But the trips they approve will matter more than ever.

That means:

Fewer unnecessary trips.

More strategic trips.

Higher traveler expectations.

Higher willingness to pay in the right circumstances.

More technology.

More scrutiny around ROI.

And much greater demand for a seamless experience.

In other words:

Business travel may become more selective while simultaneously becoming more valuable.

The signal I brought back from Chicago

The business travel industry spent decades waiting for technology to catch up with its ambitions.

That period is ending.

Technology is no longer the main constraint.

AI, integrated platforms, real-time data and automation are opening possibilities that simply did not exist a few years ago.

And that means the biggest question for our industry is no longer technological.

It is strategic.

What will we do differently now that we finally can?

That, for me, is the real signal from Chicago.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, keep exploring the endless possibilities of hospitality.

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