American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) told company investors on a recent fourth-quarter 2022 earnings call that they expect total business travel spending to grow by 24% in 2023 to reach over a trillion dollars.

Business travel recovery has been slower than leisure travel in the post-pandemic environment. Amex GBT says expectations for a strong year are supported by data from its customer portfolio and studies from across the industry.

According to the Global Business Travel Association’s Q1 2023 Business Travel Outlook Poll published at the end of January, domestic and international bookings are currently at 67% and 54% of 2019 levels. This is up from 63% and 50% in their October survey.

According to Amex GBT, 78% of travel managers expect more, or a lot more trips in 2023 versus 2022. A strong 86% of travel suppliers expect higher spending from corporate customers in 2023, an improvement from 80% in October. Finance, insurance, professional services and consulting are the sectors showing the strongest growth rates.

Amex GBT says that SME (small- and medium-sized enterprise) clients are leading the recovery. The company told investors that distributed teams and hybrid work models are creating new demand for business travel, meetings, and events; and that global travel spend is expected to grow as capacity increases and existing restrictions in various regions are softened or lifted.

Amex GBT CEO Paul Abbott says the company’s meetings and events division has more than recovered, compared with 2019. Groups of under 50 people now represent its fastest growing area of business.

Amex GBT signed “$2.1 billion of SME new wins value” in 2022, with a quarter of that value coming from businesses whose travel programs were previously unmanaged or handled in-house.

“Of course, our biggest growth opportunity is with SME customers,” said Abbott. “This represents a total opportunity of approximately $950 billion in travel spend. Within the SME segment, we are the #1 player in managed travel, but only 30% of the $950 billion opportunity is actually managed today, providing a significant growth opportunity.”