It's the season of summer holidays and second quarter results.
Even with everyone's attention focused on their well-earned summer break, it is virtually impossible to ignore the volatility in stock and currency markets around the world. The US Dow Jones and UK FTSE have both lost about 5% in value this week as investors scramble to move funds into so-called safe havens such as gold, which reached a six-year high this week, and government bonds.
Travel suppliers' Q2 results are a stark reminder that markets affect business travel management at least as much as all the new booking channels, data analytic tools and loyalty programmes cheerfully being launched this week.
IHG's second quarter results post growth, albeit slower, in China yet caution about the future. It is a microcosm of what travel suppliers and managers are both facing.
Gloomy market conditions don't disrupt the plans of only shareholders and people who need to exchange their money into another currency for holiday spending. The jitteriness is being caused by the escalating trade war between the US and China. Globalisation means that any trade war between the world's two largest economies will have ramifications everywhere. In the front line are companies with positions in China but all 'exporters' will be severely affected because of uncertainty in both exchange rates and any additional, unbudgeted external costs such as tariffs.
All international business travel is ultimately about exporting and importing or foreign trade — the creating, buying, selling of goods and services in foreign markets — so this uncertainty will have an effect no matter how much best practice and whizzy tools are employed.
The world's big global hotel management companies — IHG, Hilton, Accor, Marriott — have all recently expanded into, and have aggressive pipelines in, China. Their impeccable reasoning has not been dissimilar to UK and European businesses' broader strategic thinking about so-called emerging markets. Western markets are saturated and mature, ie slow-growing, while growth in countries such as India and China has been buoyant. Investing in China meant the potential to grow new revenues to compensate for sluggishness in home markets.
China may now be considered the world's largest corporate travel market but brakes on this market are appearing for reasons from the lack of stability in Hong Kong to these escalating trade wars. The possible effects of this slowdown peppered the second quarter results of Hilton, Accor and IHG who all warned about the China syndrome. (Marriott ignored China in its commentary but focused on the good news of its less market-sensitive fees income.)
The US may be imposing tariffs on Chinese goods but the Chinese government is letting its currency devalue which means that Chinese exports will remain relatively cheap, ie competitive.
These trade wars might just continue until the US elections in November 2020 and that means a climate of uncertainty in which businesses will be cautious about investing and expanding.
And travelling. Business travel volumes are likely to slow.