The Facts About Business Travel

With all of the continuing rhetoric about meetings, it's important to learn a few key facts:

The Facts

• Business travel creates 2.4 million jobs nationally. Meetings and events are directly responsible for 1 million jobs.
• The U.S. Travel Association estimates that 200,000 travel jobs were lost in 2008 and expects another 247,000 to be lost in 2009
• Business travel accounts for $39 billion in tax revenue at the federal, state, and local levels.
• Meetings and events are responsible for 15% of all travel-related spending.
• Business travel supports more than 200 hotel and convention centers across the country.
• According to the results of a Meetings and Conventions magazine study, 52 percent of respondents claim that the backlash against meetings has been extremely or moderately influential on their company’s decisions to hold events.
• In a recent survey, 87 percent of Americans say that encouraging people to travel recreationally within the U.S. could improve the country's economic landscape.
• Each meeting and event traveler spends an average of $1,000 per trip.
• According to a recent survey of Fortune 1,000 Chief Marketing Officers, meetings and events provide the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.