Global

Welcome to Carlson Wagonlit Travel's first global forecast, where we project 2012 supplier prices for airlines, hotels, ground transportation providers, and meetings and events suppliers.
  
While CWT has produced a North American forecast for several years, this piece provides projections for every region of the world, as well as country-level expectations for those markets to which CWT clients most frequently travel.
  

This information is intended to inform your negotiations with travel suppliers, and to help us deliver against that goal, we've enlisted the assistance of a standing contributor to CWT's North American forecast, Professor Connan Snider of the University of California at Los Angeles' Department of Economics, to supplement our team's corporate travel knowledge with his expertise on statistical modeling, forecasting, and price indexing.

Following our analysis, and perhaps not surprising given year-over-year increases in business travel demand worldwide, CWT confirms that prices in most geographic areas and for most categories of spend are expected to rise in 2012, with the most substantial increases to occur in the booming Latin America region. Even so, economic uncertainty continues in some parts of the world and has resurfaced in others, prompting increasing questions on exactly what 2012 holds in store for organizations and, by extension, for business travel.