Most EU Countries Still Make Fewer Business Trips Than Before the Pandemic

Journeys made for work, as residents report them

Every Member State surveys its households about the travel of residents aged 15 and over: the trips that kept them away from home for at least one night during the year, and the main reason for each. Eurostat groups those reasons into personal ones, which cover holidays, visits to friends and relatives and other private purposes, and a single professional one, labelled "professional, business" in the table. That second category is what this page calls business travel: a trip whose main purpose was the traveller's work.

The unit is the trip, not the traveller. A sales engineer who goes away for work ten times in a year counts ten times, and a colleague who never leaves the office counts not at all. A trip counts wherever it goes, abroad or inside the traveller's own country. A companion table records the nights those same trips lasted, and dividing nights by trips gives the average length of a trip, a value Silver Data Lab derives rather than one Eurostat publishes.

Back above 2019, by a narrow margin

In 2019 EU residents made 124.7 million business trips. The following year the count dropped to 60.7 million, less than half of it, and the climb back took five years: 69.6 million in 2021, 100.7 million in 2022, an estimated 110.3 million in 2023 and 123.1 million in 2024, which was still 1.3% below 2019. The total passed its 2019 level in 2025, at 129.8 million, up 5.5% on the year and 4.1% on 2019.

Personal travel recovered further in the same span: trips for personal reasons rose 6.4% between 2019 and 2025. Business therefore weighs slightly less in the whole than it did, 10.7% of all trips in 2025 against 10.9% in 2019. Every share and every change on this page is derived by Silver Data Lab from the published counts.

Two countries carry the EU total

Germany is the largest source of business trips, with 40.9 million in 2025, and it stands almost exactly where it stood in 2019, 0.1% lower. France is second, with 29.8 million against 23.2 million in 2019, a rise of 28.6%. Together the two account for 54.5% of all business trips made by EU residents.

The EU's net gain since 2019 is smaller than France's gain alone, and smaller than Sweden's. France added 6.6 million trips and Sweden 7.1 million, 13.7 million between them, while the EU total rose by 5.2 million. Taken together, the remaining 25 Member States made 8.6 million fewer business trips than in 2019, a fall of 9.4%. Leave France out of the total and the other 26 are 1.4% below 2019; leave out Sweden instead and they are 1.7% below. Each of these subtotals is a sum of national counts computed by Silver Data Lab, not a figure Eurostat publishes.

Neither of the two national series moves smoothly. France recorded 33.3 million business trips in 2024, more than in 2025. Sweden's count went from 11.6 million in 2024 to 17.1 million in 2025, a rise of 47.3% in a single year, and before the pandemic it had swung from 5.0 million in 2015 to 11.3 million in 2017. In series like these, a change measured between two single years depends heavily on which two years are picked.

Sixteen Member States still below 2019

In 2025, 16 of the 27 Member States recorded fewer business trips by their residents than in 2019; a year earlier the count was 17. For two of the sixteen the shortfall is marginal: Germany is 0.1% below and Spain 1.0%. For three it is more than two fifths.

Slovakia's residents made 1.9 million business trips in 2019 and 0.7 million in 2025, a fall of 60.3%. Italy's made 7.8 million and 3.5 million, a fall of 54.9%; Italian business trips dropped to 2.5 million in 2020, and their highest count since then is 4.1 million, in 2023. Finland is 44.2% below its 2019 count, followed by Greece at 37.4%, Romania at 37.2% and Denmark at 36.3%.

In these countries business travel fell further than personal travel. Italian residents' personal trips are 23.3% below 2019 and Finnish residents' 20.9%, less than half the fall in their business trips, and Slovak residents' personal trips are down 4.8%. Business has become a much smaller part of their travel as a result: 7.7% of Italian residents' trips in 2025 against 12.5% in 2019, and 6.0% of Slovak residents' trips against 13.3%.

Where the count rose most

Sweden's residents made 71.4% more business trips in 2025 than in 2019, Ireland's 50.6% more and Bulgaria's 39.0% more. Poland, Slovenia, France, Latvia and Lithuania follow, each up by more than a quarter. In Sweden and Ireland business trips rose together with personal ones: Swedish residents' personal trips were up 97.3% and Irish residents' 53.1%. In Bulgaria the rise was concentrated in business, with personal trips up 8.5%.

None of the 2019, 2024 or 2025 values behind these movements carries a break flag, so the table does not present any of them as a change of method. The figures still come from household surveys, and a survey's results can shift with its sample, its questionnaire or how a respondent's reason for travelling is classified, as well as with travel itself. The table does not say which of these applies in any country, and this page offers no cause as a finding. One common reading of the period is that video calls replaced some journeys once made for work; the table cannot test it, and it would not account for the countries where business trips rose by half or more.

More trips, fewer nights

The count of nights tells a different story from the count of trips. EU residents spent 415.8 million nights on business trips in 2019, 382.5 million in 2024 and 401.3 million in 2025, still 3.5% below 2019 in the year the number of trips passed it. Nights divided by trips, the average business trip lasted 3.3 nights in 2019 and 3.1 in 2025. Personal trips did not shorten in the same way: they averaged 5.2 nights in 2019 and 5.3 in 2025.

No Member State lost more business nights than Germany. Its residents made almost as many business trips in 2025 as in 2019 but spent 11.8% fewer nights on them, 122.9 million against 139.3 million, so their average business trip fell from 3.4 nights to 3.0. The 16.4 million business nights Germany lost exceed the EU's net fall of 14.4 million; the other 26 Member States together spent 0.7% more business nights in 2025 than in 2019, but their business trips grew faster still, so their average trip shortened as well. France's trips grew faster than its nights, 28.6% against 15.2%, and its average business trip shortened from 3.1 nights to 2.7.

How much of travel is work

Business accounted for 16.2% of Swedish residents' trips in 2025, the highest share in the EU, followed by Lithuania at 15.3%, Germany at 14.9% and Estonia at 14.8%. At the other end it was 1.8% of Romanian residents' trips, 3.0% of Greek residents' and 3.5% of Czech residents', with Hungary at 3.7%. Across the EU the share was 10.7%, and between 2019 and 2025 it fell in 21 of the 27 Member States.

A share has two halves, and either can move it. Residents who take many personal trips will show a low business share even where business travel is common, and Sweden's share fell from 18.2% in 2019 to 16.2% while its business trips grew by more than two thirds, because its personal trips grew faster still.

Personal travel by the same residents is the subject of the study on holidays abroad, which follows where holiday nights are spent. This page keeps to the trips made for work.