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Business travel forecast: what's in store for 2004.

Article Excerpt
I'm a writer and a journalist--I'm no seer--so when it comes to forecasting, for me, rhyme is probably as good a basis for an outlook as reason. It worked for former Hyatt CEO Daryl Hartley Leonard in the aftermath of the first Gulf war when he said the name of the game was to stay alive until '95. So I can't do much better than to modify his mantra: Our industry won't thrive until 2005.

The year ahead seems to promise a modest recovery as long as there is no terrorism in America. Unfortunately, with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein still on the loose, a major act of terrorism in the United States cannot be ruled out as a possibility. I am not a pessimist, hut when people are ready to kill themselves to kill others, it is very hard to stop them. I would like to think we can, and so my outlook is based on the assumption that terrorists will not succeed on our soil.

Even so, I suspect the Bush Administration will step up the alerts in the coming months, but that they will continue to have a decreasing negative impact on business travel.

The fact that it's an election year probably bodes well for our economy and our domestic industry in the short term.

Exactly how things play out remains to be seen, but of a few things, I...

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