Spendesk, the 7-in-1 spend management solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has today shared its latest insights into business travel spend for 2022 in the UK, France, and Germany.

Spendesk has monitored business spend — including travel, accommodation, and eating out — across 3,500 SMBs in the three countries throughout 2022. Key findings include:

• The average UK business travel spend per company for the year in 2022 was 48,058€ (£42,440), up 147% from 2021 (19,470€/£17,194)

• In comparison, France and Germany both saw a 54% YoY increase over the same time period with 42,267€ (£37,325) and 51,318€ (£45,320) respectively

• The UK was previously slow to recover post-pandemic (compared to France and Germany) but 2022’s 147% uplift draws the UK level on travel spending and surpasses both France and Germany

• UK spend on train travel, while still lagging behind flying, jumped from 32.53% in 2021 to 41.60% in 2022 — representing a shift towards more business travel on trains

In the UK, the huge uplift in business travel spend may come as a surprise in a year that saw many issues with international travel and multiple UK transport strikes in Q4 — all under the umbrella of wider economic uncertainty and the looming recession throughout early and mid 2022.

The study also revealed that the UK’s top travel suppliers – namely British Airways, Eurostar and Trainline – led the way in 2022 for business travel in the UK, with British Airways increasing from 40,600€ (£35,811) in 2021 to 69,308€ (£61,000) in 2022, Eurostar up from 10,545€ (£9,298) to 30,851€ (£27,203) and Trainline almost doubling its spend from 19,453€ (£17,137) to 42,470€ (£37,447) – showing a positive growth in 2022 post the pandemic. (graph below for representation).

In terms of travel by road in the UK, Uber commanded the most spend in 2022, with just over half (55%) of spend going on the app-based taxi service. Standard taxis accounted for 38% and other app-based taxi services had 7% of business travel spend.

Accommodation bookings were also included in Spendesk’s data and when crunching the numbers for the most popular suppliers in 2022, Airbnb topped the list with 115,698€ (£102,014) spent per company, per month followed by Hotels.com with 57,308€ (£50,530) and Booking.com came in third with 37,034€ (£32,653) going towards business spend.