Corporate Travel Index Europe

Published: March 29, 2023

BTN Europe’s 2023 Corporate Travel Index is here. It’s your free access to the managed travel industry’s definitive guide to business travel costs in nearly 50 cities across Europe. Discover average hotel rates across five tiers, the cost of airport taxi transfers, average meal costs and city risk scores. Use it to benchmark your current programme or to offer insights into rate trends in the markets you care about most. Big project coming up in Helsinki? We’ve got that market. New offices opening in Rome or Rotterdam? We’ve got those too. Wherever your company’s business travel takes employees around Europe, this is your go-to resource as you create travel budgets and relevant spending policies, source in-market partners and negotiate rates.

Access the Corporate Travel Index Calculator via the button below to calculate total daily trip costs for your chosen destinations and discover quarter-on-quarter changes. Zurich emerged as the most expensive destination for business trips in our most recent update and for each quarter last year, while Milan usurped Paris as the second-costliest city in Q4 and London fell to fourth. Meanwhile, the cities experiencing the most-rapidly rising hotel rates are Istanbul, Antwerp, Munich and Sofia.

Market volatility
It’s no secret that rate volatility – and increases – have buffeted business travel budgets for the last three years. BTN Europe’s commitment to updating the Corporate Travel Index on a quarterly basis gives you insights into market seasonality and what you can expect for corporate rates. Remember, the Corporate Travel Index only reflects corporate bookings – not leisure – but does include dynamic rate contracts so market rates still impact these numbers, as does availability of negotiated inventory.

Food glorious food
As food costs rise for restaurants, meal prices are only going in one direction. BTN Europe’s Corporate Travel Index offers the only industry resource for meal costs in 50 major business travel markets across Europe. Understanding the value it delivers – and the accuracy required – we have completely rebuilt our restaurant and meal cost database to ensure our data reflects real market conditions around dining out in 2023. As meal costs tend to be more durable, we update these on an annual basis, but make no mistake, companies will pay more for business meals this year.

Corporate Travel Index methodology

Hotel rates: Advito, HRS and Prime Numbers provide quarterly aggregated, anonymised rates booked by corporate clients across five hotel tiers.

Car rental rates: Advito, Emburse and Prime Numbers provide quarterly aggregated, anonymized, quarterly U.S. car rental rates booked by corporate clients across three car rental tiers. Advito provides combined local tax and fee data.

Meal prices: BTN Europe rebuilt its meal and restaurant database in 2023. BTN Europe will update meal data annually, using the following methodology. Breakfast is based on continental breakfast. For lunch and dinner in each city that has a population of 1.5 million or more, BTN Europe surveyed 12 restaurants; in each smaller city, they called six. BTN Europe converted prices from local currency to Euros on February 15, 2023. Lunch is based on a sandwich, salad and non-alcoholic drink. Dinner is based on a fish, chicken or beef entree; salad; a dessert or cheese tray; and glass of wine.

Taxi rates: BTN Europe compiles taxi rate data annually using Rome2Rio.

Risk scores: GeoSure synthesizes near real-time traveller safety data using a proprietary combination of big data predictive analytics, artificial intelligence/natural language processing and crowdsourced input. GeoSafeScores powered by GeoSure incorporate structured and unstructured data from sources like the United Nations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, Interpol and The World Bank, as well as macro sources like inflation trends, education, income levels, political stability, trending health and disease data, neighbourhood-level police presences, healthcare facility proliferation and infrastructure characteristics. BTN Europe updates risk data quarterly.