Dubai, an emirate with global ambitions to diversify, expanded its airport recently with a new terminal paved with white marble, devoted to its growing fleet of Airbus A380s double-deckers. Similarly, Beijing and Shanghai greet foreign travelers with gleaming and spacious new international terminals.
Istanbul, ancient capital of empires, is successfully refashioning itself as a modern transportation hub with better connections to Asia than rivals in the United States or Europe. And Brazil, a rising oil power, is pouring billions into infrastructure as it prepares to host the soccer World Cup next year and the Olympic Games in 2016.
Business travelers are expected to spend about $1.16 trillion on airfare, accommodations and other travel this year, according to the Global Business Travel Association, up from $1.07 trillion last year. Much of that growth is coming from developing nations, prompting a boom in new construction in emerging markets while business travel in the United States recovers at a slow pace and Europe, mired in the euro crisis, remains stagnant.
“What we’ve seen in terms of infrastructure in recent years recalls the old baseball adage — if you build it, they will come,” said Tony Davis, a partner at Irelandia Aviation, an investor in low-cost airlines like VivaAerobus in Mexico and Tiger Airways in Singapore.
The growth in passenger travel tells the story. Global traffic rose 4 percent last year, according to the Airports Council International, a trade group that represents more than 1,700 airports in 170 countries. In North America and Europe, airports had only modest gains. But air transportation in emerging economies has been buoyant — a testament to their dynamism and growth prospects in time of low interest rates, and their opportunities in raw materials, commodities and trade.
Traffic last year grew by 7.5 percent in Asia, 7.3 percent in Latin America, 6.4 percent in Africa and 13 percent in the Middle East, according to the airport trade group, outpacing Western airports by a wide margin. Five airports in emerging markets, each with more than 40 million annual passengers, reported double-digit growth — Istanbul, Dubai, Jakarta, Bangkok and Singapore — according to a report released last month by the airport group.
Atlanta, currently home to the world’s busiest airport, grew 3.3 percent. Chicago O’Hare International Airport, the second-busiest in the United States, actually shrank slightly, according to the report.
Nowhere has the growth in business travel been more robust and prolonged than in China. Passengers at Beijing Capital International Airport tripled in the last decade, and most travel experts expect that it will jump ahead of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport as the world’s top airport by passenger traffic next year.
China’s business travel spending has grown an average of 15.5 percent each year from 2000 to 2013 and is set to reach $226 billion this year, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Remarkably, that figure is growing even as China’s export-led economy begins to slow and make the transition to a consumer-oriented one.
Chinese business travel is forecast to increase nearly 17 percent next year, and China is set to overtake the United States as the world’s top business travel market by then.
Shanghai built a new terminal at the Hongqiao International Airport as part of a $9 billion investment program that also included a transportation hub linking the airport to city buses, subways and a new high-speed rail network. The airport, which opened three years ago and can handle 300,000 flights a year, has high-end shops like Armani and chains like Starbucks.
To cater to China’s rising middle class and fulfill the leadership’s desire to reduce the economy’s reliance on exports, businesses will need a better travel infrastructure across the vast Chinese interior. To that end, the Chinese government has outlined plans to build another 100 airports throughout the country over the next couple of years.
“You really have a changing landscape throughout the developing economies,” said Michael W. McCormick, the executive director of the Global Business Traveler Association, a group whose members include corporate travel managers. “The infrastructure is clearly racing to catch up with demand.”
Airports and Hotels in Emerging Markets Outpace the West
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