Business Travel Is Booming Again. So Is the Compliance Risk Hiding Inside It.

Global business travel just posted its strongest year in over a decade — and the resurgence is quietly building a compliance problem many companies aren't tracking.

According to the newly released 2026 GBTA Business Travel Index, global business travel spending grew 8.4% in 2025 to nearly $1.6 trillion, and GBTA forecasts another 7.2% increase in 2026, pushing spend to roughly $1.71 trillion. Trip volume tells the same story: business travelers took 1.82 billion trips globally in 2025, and nearly three-quarters of travelers say they traveled as much or more than they did the year before. Frequency is climbing too: GBTA found 44% of travelers took three to ten business trips last year, and 15% took more than ten.

More trips. More frequent trips. More repeat visits to the same destinations. That combination is exactly what turns an ordinary business trip into a tax, immigration, or social security problem, and it's the subject of one of our latest advisories: Extended Business Travelers: The Compliance Challenge Hiding in Plain Sight.

Why the math doesn't work in companies' favor

The instinct is to assume that short trips under 183 days are safe. They're not. The 183-day threshold is only one condition of treaty relief, and it's calculated differently everywhere. The U.S. Substantial Presence Test weighs days across three years, so 120 days this year can still trigger residency once prior years are factored in. Switzerland can establish tax residency after just 90 days. Canada requires payroll withholding from the first working day. New York and California have no minimum day threshold at all for state tax purposes.

None of this shows up on a single trip. It shows up on the fifth trip to the same city in a calendar year, when nobody was tracking the cumulative days — that is, until a digital border system, an EU ETIAS pre-check, or a state auditor connects the dots.

What GBTA's numbers add to the picture

The GBTA data reinforces why this is a 2026 problem, not a hypothetical one. Rising trip volume and frequency mean more employees are quietly accumulating days across borders and state lines, often through informal or employee-initiated travel that never touches a mobility policy. As GBTA notes, Asia/Pacific and North America are driving much of the 2026 volume growth, which are also two of the more compliance-aggressive regions (China's economic employer scrutiny, U.S. state tax traps) for exactly this population.

The takeaway for mobility leaders

Rising travel volume is more than a travel management story. It sheds light on potential compliance exposure. Companies that formalize EBT policy now, before volume keeps climbing toward GBTA's forecasted $2 trillion by 2030, will be managing risk proactively instead of discovering it in an audit.

Read the full breakdown, including the U.S. state tax trap, the "accidental expat" problem, and practical steps for getting ahead of it, in our advisory: Extended Business Travelers: The Compliance Challenge Hiding in Plain Sight.