Returning the Investment on Business Travel

According to The Return on Investment of U.S. Business Travel, a recent study prepared for the U.S. Travel Association by Oxford Economics USA, for every dollar spent on business travel, companies benefit an average of $12.50 in increased revenue, and $3.80 in new profits. The results of this collective analysis show a robust and irrefutable relationship between a company’s investment in business travel — including internal meetings, trade shows, conferences, incentives, and sales — and its profitability. Among the chief findings:

- Curbing business travel can reduce a company’s profits for years. The average business in the U.S. would forfeit 17% of its profits in the first year of eliminating business travel. It would take more than three years for profits to recover.

- Both executives and business travelers estimate that 28% of current business would be lost without in-person meetings.

- Both executives and business travelers estimate that roughly 40% of their prospective customers are converted to new customers with an in-person meeting compared to 16% without such a meeting.

- More than half of business travelers stated that 5-20% of their company’s new customers were the result of trade show participation.

- Executives stated that in order to achieve the same effect of incentive travel, an employee’s total base compensation would need to be increased by 8.5%.

- An increase in government travel spending of $1 million will increase government worker productivity and therefore output by between $4.6 million and $6.3 million.

For more information on this study, visit meetingsmeanbusiness.com/value-meetings.