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Report: Global Car Rental Spend for Business Travel Drops in Q2

While car rental spend dropped, other categories such as airfare, hotel and dining, increased worldwide compared to 2010.

by Staff
August 23, 2011
2 min to read


Travel and expense (T&E) management service company, Concur, found that all categories except for car rental spend have increased worldwide compared to 2010, as well as compared to last quarter in its T&E Spend Report from Aug. 17. Car rental spend made up 3.2 percent of total spend for 2011's second quarter - down 0.3 percent from last year - for an average of $186.85 per transaction.

Airfare, hotel and dining made up more than 50 percent of total spend in the second quarter of 2011, both worldwide and in the United States. Dining spend and training were the only other categories besides auto rental to have a slight decrease over the first quarter worldwide. Air averages have globally increased by 9.3 percent compared to last year and is up 2.3 percent from the last quarter.

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In comparison to the global market, the U.S. has seen more frequent drops, where dining, entertainment, car rental, telecom and training all decreased from the first quarter. Car rental percentage of total T&E spend is higher in the U.S. than the global rate at 4.4 percent, but this figure dropped 1.2 percent from the first quarter and 0.8 percent since 2010. Each average car rental transaction was at an average of $178.46 in the second quarter - slightly lower than the global average.

Concur's T&E report also looked at the 25 most visited U.S. cities and their respective average transaction amounts. New York, Las Vegas and Chicago took the top three most visited spots, with New York standing as the most expensive in the first three categories of hotel, dining and entertainment, but it was lower in the fourth category of ground transportation. Car rental spend was not included in this part of the study.

The report compiled information from thousands of Concur clients, which represents more than 15 million business travelers.

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