Chennai: When it comes to Business travel involving domestic or international trips by employees or organisations, India has emerged as the third largest Business Travel Market in APAC after China and Japan. The positive growth in the country and also the ability of States such as Tamil Nadu in being receptive has leveraged the country’s presence in the global arena.
Business travel spending is expected to treble until 2030 from $30 billion in 2015, a report by consultancy KPMG and FCM Travel Solutions which attributed the growth to “political, economic and demographic factors,” said.
According to sources, India is poised to be one of the fastest growing business travel market for the next five years with annualised growth of 12%. The country has moved from number 10 business travel market to number 7 in the last one year and is expected to move up further overtaking either South Korea or France to claim number 6 spot in next one year. "India is the best market to be in the business of business travel," say experts.
Talking about India and the relevance of forums like Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) conferences, Gaurav Sundaram, Regional Director, (GBTA) India, said that there is hardly any educational forum to sensitise and educate the travel managers about what is happening in the world. Although there are companies that have adopted global best practices within their organisations, interest is missing to talk about it and share the knowledge with others.
Buyers don’t talk with each other, nor sellers and communication between buyers and sellers is also missing. “Desire to collaborate and share knowledge is unfortunately missing in India. Buyer-seller divide is also blatant here,” he said.
