How geopolitics could reshape business travel in 2025

The planet’s original business travellers, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, could be in for a busy 2025. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider this doom-laden introduction to the Risk Outlook 2025, published by travel risk management company International SOS (ISOS).

“The relative geopolitical stability that has held since the dismantling of the former Soviet Union has now fractured,” writes chairman and CEO Arnaud Vaissié. “Conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine have shaken the world. Unrest and polarisation are rife. Extreme weather events and resource scarcity further fuel instability. The prevalence of infectious diseases adds another layer of concern.”

The ISOS publication includes a survey of senior risk professionals, with 65 per cent believing risks have increased over the past year and 69 per cent predicting significant impacts from geopolitical challenges in 2025.

Not the least of those challenges is the return to the US presidency this week of Donald Trump. Having already threatened, among much else, tariffs and military action against traditional allies, an inflection point has seemingly arrived. “The shifting geopolitical environment will have a massive impact on business travel for certainly the next four years,” ISOS regional security director for northern Europe James Wood tells BTN Europe.

Ironically, the volatility of the Trump presidency arrives just when “the underlying theme is good news for business travel. The economics are turning in the right direction,” says Mike Eggleton, director of research and intelligence for BCD Travel. After the shocks of Covid and the Ukraine war, inflation has moderated, as have interest rates, thus stimulating consumer confidence, business investment and, consequently, corporate travel.

The question is whether the current benign conditions for business travel will hold firm in the intensifying geopolitical turbulence. The likely answer falls broadly into four categories: “weaponised uncertainty”, doors shutting, doors opening, and personal risks for travellers.

“Weaponised uncertainty”

This is a phrase coined by Meredith Crowley, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, to characterise Trump’s modus operandi. Volatility, in other words, is not an accidental byproduct of his actions; it is a deliberate strategy to disadvantage perceived rivals.

Will that unpredictability inhibit business travel? Another 2025 outlook, this time from consultancy Control Risks Group (CRG), labels the USA as the “Uncertain States of America”. According to CRG CEO Nick Allan, “despite the competitive and fractured state of geopolitical relations, the world remains globalised and economically interconnected in ways that mean avoiding turbulence is not an option… A world where the perception of risk is too high is a world where international firms are often reluctant to expand and explore and where they may sit on their hands to see which way the wind blows, or if the storm will subside.”

One country where businesses are already facing this dilemma is Denmark, threatened, extraordinarily, not only with tariffs but even military action by Trump if it refuses to cede control of Greenland to the USA.

Danish Business Travel Assocation general manager Jen Søndergaard believes tariffs will not materialise, partly thanks to “all for one, one for all” support from the European Union. However, “it’s more the uncertainty which would make companies look at their strategies and decide whether to be cautious or go ahead as if nothing has happened,” he says.

Unpredictability has other consequences for business travel. One is the need to stay alert for sudden, untrailed lurches in policy. “It could be a 4am Tweet and suddenly Indian travellers have to go through additional security screening. It really could just be announced by Tweet,” says Riskline risk analyst Paul Mutter.

Uncertainty will also be amplified by the tsunami of misinformation that makes it harder to spot where true risks lie, a challenge compounded by social media providers removing their fact checkers, according to Wood. The risk is that employers and their travelling employees could end up with different views of what constitutes truth.

“In the main, people are able to discern misinformation,” he adds, but “different generations in the workplace have different views on veracity, corroboration of information, and the utiilisation and sourcing of that information. This is an issue that organisations need to face up to.”

Doors closing: tariffs and travel bans

International business travel has thrived on decades of economic globalisation fuelled by free trade. Now, says the ISOS Risk Outlook, “countries are becoming more inward-looking, driven by rising nativism and the pressures of populism and protectionism. This trend will lead to policies focused on bringing industries back home, prioritising national resources, and tightening border controls, which will affect immigration, trade, and industrial strategies.”

Rather than much-discussed tariffs, it is those tightening border controls which could prove most immediately and directly consequential for business travel. “USA entry restrictions could be tightened considerably as per last time round,” says Mutter. The most likely indicator of which countries will be targeted are those that “have already been publicly identified by the incoming administration as uncooperative on certain issues, which includes the USA’s biggest trade partners Canada and Mexico. China and India are also very likely to be affected from early on.”

If Trump does increase tariffs, retaliation in kind can be expected. The potential to chill trade and travel between the countries involved is obvious but the reality may be more complicated. Companies may elect to continue exporting to the USA even with tariffs, and in the short term, says Eggleton, “when you start increasing regulation, that sometimes means there is more need to travel to have face-to-face meetings with officials and others.”

A different concern is the potential for tariffs to increase travel costs, especially when visiting the USA. This is already happening. Tariffs fuel inflation (as could Trump’s anticipated tax cuts), which might force up US interest rates. These fears are keeping the dollar high against other currencies. Should tariffs be introduced, the dollar would be turbo-charged by other countries depreciating their currencies to offset the increased price of their exports.

Doors opening: new trade flows

In November 2024, the BRICS grouping of increasingly powerful non-Western nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) enlarged to become BRICS+, now also including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudia Arabia may also join. Together, they repesent 45 per cent of the world’s population and 35 per cent of global GDP based on purchasing power parity, according to a briefing published by the House of Commons Library.

David Henig, director of UK Trade Policy Project, recently told the BBC: “The US is no longer the leader in world trade. 120 countries or so have China as their major trade partner.” CRG’s outlook concurs. “US global power is in relative decline,” it says. “Countries have other options for borrowing money, trading goods and buying tech.”

With more trading options available in an increasingly multi-polar world, “companies that pull out of the US market will go elsewhere,” says Eggleton. He does not believe tariffs will reduce the flow of trade and travel overall but will instead make it flow in new directions.

Eggleton expects increased business travel from Europe to India in particular, but also China, Vietnam and perhaps Africa, a continent similarly identified for trade growth by Wood, who names two other likely winners. “Türkiye and Saudia Arabia are playing a more muscular geopolitical role within their region,” he says. “I think their trade routes will open up as well.” The recent dewesternisation of the former’s name appears highly symbolic of this growing self-confidence.

Travelling to a more diverse set of destinations means “the complexity of travel will change going into 2025 and beyond,” says Wood. Two obvious examples travel managers will need to navigate are visa and vaccination requirements.

Proliferating risks for travellers

Every year ISOS publishes national security risk level ratings. For 2025, not one country has had its risk level reduced. With different members of the United Nations Security Council backing different sides in conflicts around the world, intractable military confrontations look set only to intensify. Such conflicts threaten foreign workers in sectors like energy.

Regular business travellers are less in danger, but do face disruptions. Western airlines, for example, were already avoiding Russian airspace. Following the suspicious downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft over Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, they are now extending cancellations in the region and steering clear of even larger swathes of the Former Soviet Union, says Mutter.

And while airlines are gradually returning to the Middle East, “that again could change. The incoming US administration has vowed to take a much harder line on Iran,” Mutter says. If that takes the form of military conflict, “that would be very bad for the Gulf state hubs. They would have to very significantly reroute traffic and worry their airports could be attacked by drones. That would be a real disaster for the industry.”

Business travellers face other risks besides. Recent fires in Los Angeles and floods in Valencia demonstrate the growing likelihood of being caught in environmental disasters even in Western countries.

Meanwhile, ISOS warns of the return of infectious diseases that had largely been in abeyance through vaccination, including polio, typhoid, measles and whooping cough. The accompanying epidemic of vaccine scepticism is one reason these diseases have spread, and are an example of the kind of disinformation employers might have to fight if they try to step up vaccinations of their travellers.