Since the dawn of modern business travel, the United States has spent more on business travel than any other nation. But soon – very, very soon – China will surpass the U.S. as the busiest business travel country.
A new study by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) shows that Chinese business travel is skyrocketing. Thanks to a surging economy, Chinese business travel is expected to jump 14 percent this year and 17 percent in 2014. By 2016, China is expected to be the world’s number one business travel market.
The GBTA reports that most of the Chinese business travel is to other southeastern Asian destinations – South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. The United States is the eighth most popular destination for Chinese business travelers.
The rapid growth poses an infrastructure issue for Chinese airports. GBTA says most will have to double or triple their capacity in order to accommodate the demand, and that the country plans to build 100 new airports over the next decade. That’s a ludicrous amount of construction. Of course, the alternative is scenes like this from a Beijing train station.
Image from www.traveldailysnews.asia.
