Global travel demand is showing signs of softening, with consumers across the US, UK, France and Germany planning to spend less on both leisure and business trips over the next 12 months, according to a major UBS survey of more than 6,800 travellers.
The 12th UBS Evidence Lab travel intentions survey, conducted between March and early April, found that overall leisure travel spending intentions fell 1.1% year-on-year, while business travel spending expectations dropped 1.9%, both worse than the previous survey.
France showed the sharpest deterioration, with leisure spending intentions down 5.3% and business spending down 4.5%, followed by Germany and the US.
The UK was the sole bright spot, with leisure spend expectations up 2.7% and business spend up 0.8%.
The number of leisure flights respondents expect to take over the coming year fell roughly 6% to an average of 3.3, now 8% below 2019 levels, while expected business flights dropped 10% to 4.3, sitting 20% below pre-pandemic expectations.
Business flight intentions fell across all four markets, with the UK seeing the steepest decline at 19%, followed by the US and France at 11% each.
Despite the drop in volumes, air travel spending intentions actually rose, with leisure up 4.8% and business up 2.6%, a divergence UBS attributed to airfare inflation pushing up the cost per trip even as the number of journeys falls.
Accommodation intentions followed a similar pattern: leisure travellers plan to spend fewer nights away (9.5 versus 9.8 in the previous survey) while accommodation spending is still expected to rise modestly.
Airbnb continued to gain ground, ranking as the second most recognised booking platform behind Booking.com with a 70% awareness rate and an improved conversion rate of 59%, up more than five percentage points year on year.
One of the more striking findings was the growing role of artificial intelligence in trip planning, with 22.5% of business travellers now using AI assistants for travel bookings.
Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT were the most popular tools, with Gemini leading in the US and France and OpenAI preferred in the UK and Germany. A majority of respondents, 56%, expressed at least some confidence in AI tools to find the best prices, locations and travel plans.
The survey paints a picture of a travel market where consumers are still willing to travel but are becoming more selective, taking fewer trips and spending less overall while paying more per journey.