As we are currently covering the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)’s 2026 APAC Conference, we at Travel Daily Media were given the opportunity to have a chat with association chief executive Suzanne Neufang who shared her thoughts regarding the development of the business travel sector within the region and beyond.

Earlier today, Neufang helped open the conference with her overview on the current state of business travel in APAC along with the GBTA’s forecast regarding its development moving forward.

In that initial talk, she said: “2026 presents a new set of challenges for our travel industry globally. The Middle East conflict has created a lot of tension in the supply chain, rising fuel costs, and route changes that impact budgets and travel experience. [As a result,] organisations are reviewing business travel.”

Despite these challenges, we have noted that business travel is poised to grow significantly throughout the rest of the year, not just in the Asia Pacific, but throughout the world as well.

Southeast Asia as a hub for growth

When asked about how she felt about business travel becoming a key growth area for APAC, specifically Southeast Asia, Neufang pointed out there are numerous opportunities and areas that could drive sectoral development in the region.

She said: “There is so much manufacturing that happens here, and manufacturing is the largest travelling sector of all sectors that we’ve studied. Certainly that felt a bigger hit last year during the trade wars when there were tariff uncertainties between large trading partners; but travel didn't stop: it just found new routes.”

For Neufang and in many ways, all roads lead to Asia, particularly now that the region’s major cities can boast of MICE and meeting venues that are equipped for everything from simple corporate discussions to large-scale mega-events.

As she put it: “I think between all of the major cities, Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, and others beyond that, the facilities are there and the momentum is there as convention and visitors bureaus are making sure that they've got welcoming space.”
At the same time, Southeast Asia poses less barriers for entry for business travellers from around the world and digitisation has made entry into these countries so much easier.

West Asia, despite the ongoing conflicts, has been following its Asian neighbours’ lead; the same can be said in recent years of some nations in Europe.

Neufang addresses attendees at the GBTA APAC Conference 2026, featuring major regional players in the business travel sector

Where technology comes into play

The pandemic years caused a paradigm and platform shift for business travel: with everyone house-bound, it was necessary to shift to virtual conferencing to keep in touch with corporate contacts outside of one’s home country.

The period also gave rise to the development of both artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced meeting and collaboration tools, as well as simulations to deliver the look and feel of certain projects without needing to travel to jobsites.

But now that we have emerged from that period, and especially in a tech-savvy region that stands on the cutting edge of innovation, Neufang opines that even such advanced tools cannot hold a candle to the need for human interaction in the global workplace.

As she recalls: “During the pandemic, folks like Bill Gates were predicting that internal travel would go away. Internal company travel would completely end thanks to all of this great virtual technology that was being put out. Thankfully, that prediction did not come to pass. In fact, internal travel is at least one of the top two or three reasons why companies still send their people on the road.”

While virtual tools have taken the place of audio calls and even more cumbersome conference calls, Neufang believes that human interaction remains a high point for any business trip as it opens doors for negotiation and agreement via meaningful in-person dialogue.

She said: “As you can see from conferences, such as the one here, people coming together doing multiple meetings in a single week makes that business trip very productive; extremely productive, as a matter of fact. I think that there is a lot of value for those kinds of business trips, and we see that going forward.” 

The synthesis of business and leisure

Even before the pandemic, the concept of bleisure, that midpoint for business and leisure travel, has helped drive growth for business travel globally.

Such blended trips have been a boon for the busiest travellers, as they can catch a break in between meetings to have a bit of fun or extend their stay at a destination to unwind after marathon meetings.

According to Neufang: “Across our research, we know that anywhere from 50 to 65 percent of business travellers blend a trip at least once a year, [particularly in] APAC. 62 percent of these say that they blend a trip at least once a year, so it's actually more frequent here than in other parts of the world. The potential is certainly there in any large city where there's multiple things to do.”

However, she also pointed out that, due to the different parameters involved, it’s been a challenge to define blended trips, specifically when does the business aspect of it start and where does it end; vice-versa with regard to leisure.

Indeed, the global business travel sector remains hard-pressed to define the exact metrics involved in gauging the overall impact of bleisure travel.

Where tourism boards and convention bureaus can help

The success of any tourism initiative lies in the active coordination between government authorities and the private sector regardless of whether it’s in APAC or elsewhere in the world.

For Neufang, it involves understanding the different personas of travellers who come into a territory, particularly for business rather than mere leisure.

She remarked: “I've seen it at a governmental level where tourism seems to be very well understood and business travel is not understood. It's either lumped into tourism, which is a very different purpose of travel, or it's seen as private jet travel, which is also completely different from the people who are travelling. It's banded together with luxury, with MICE; it’s in a weird place.”

But one thing is certain: regardless of what form it may take at this time, business travel is certainly necessary for corporate, industrial, and even societal growth.

According to Neufang: “[Business travel] drives revenue at some level for a company that wouldn’t make a sale if key people don’t travel. Diplomatic discussions are also a way of travelling for work as it seeks to prevent wars or resolve key issues.”

In these uncertain times, however, she also pointed out a need to reevaluate how often companies should send people on the road, even whether or not to send them to certain parts of the world.

Neufang nevertheless concluded by saying: “In  the meantime, companies will be looking for the biggest value travel that gets them what they need without overdoing it on their budgets. It's always about that blend of cost effectiveness and the returns on investment of what that travel is doing.”