Eighty-five per cent of corporate travel buyers oppose Washington’s plan to demand half a decade of social media history at the border, new figures from Business Travel Show Europe reveal, and four in ten warn they will simply send fewer people to the United States if it goes ahead.
The business travel sector has mounted a near-unanimous push-back against Donald Trump’s proposal to compel foreign visitors to hand over five years of social media activity as a condition of entry to the United States, with fresh industry polling showing the policy commands almost no support among the corporate buyers who book the trips.
According to data published this week by Business Travel Show Europe, just 2.5 per cent of corporate travel professionals believe Washington should be permitted to request the information. A further 0.84 per cent would accept it only if it were confined to leisure tourists. By contrast, 85 per cent oppose the proposal outright, with opinion among that majority evenly divided as to whether the White House will actually succeed in getting the rule onto the statute book.
The plan, first filed in the US Federal Register by Customs and Border Protection and reported in detail by CNN, would oblige travellers from the 40-plus countries on the Visa Waiver Programme, including the United Kingdom, to disclose every social media handle used over the previous five years, alongside historic email addresses, telephone numbers and metadata from submitted photographs. The administration argues the additional scrutiny is required to weed out applicants displaying what it has described as “anti-American” sentiment, citing Executive Order 14161 signed by the president in January 2025. The proposal remains in its 60-day public comment window.
For corporate travel programmes already stretched by visa backlogs, geopolitical risk and rising fares, the implications are material. Should the rule pass into law, 41.18 per cent of corporates surveyed said they would send fewer travellers to the US. A further 16.81 per cent would lean more heavily on video conferencing in place of face-to-face meetings, while just 18.49 per cent expected no impact on their programme at all. The findings echo a wider repositioning of UK corporate travel away from traditional Atlantic routes, with Travelling For Business reporting earlier this year that British SMEs are increasingly looking beyond the US and Europe for new business hubs.
Louis Magliaro, executive vice president of The BTN Group, which owns the show, said the proposal risked piling fresh administrative weight onto teams that are already drowning in compliance work. “Corporate travellers already navigate complex visa processes, security checks and compliance requirements,” he said. “Adding mandatory disclosure of personal social media history could add more red tape when travel managers are already under pressure to increase efficiencies, cut costs and improve traveller wellbeing.”
The objection from industry is twofold. Data privacy lawyers have warned that requiring half a decade of digital history from millions of Visa Waiver users would, as CBS News has noted, become one of the most intrusive border-screening regimes in operation anywhere in the developed world, with knock-on consequences for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Travel managers, meanwhile, fear the practical burden of evidencing compliance for entire workforces, including senior executives whose digital footprints stretch across multiple jurisdictions and dormant accounts.
The mood music suggests the policy is landing badly at precisely the moment US-bound corporate spend should be accelerating. As Travelling For Business reported in its FY26 outlook, 45 per cent of corporates are planning bigger travel budgets in the year ahead — capacity that could now be quietly redirected to friendlier jurisdictions if Washington presses ahead.
The findings, drawn from 192 respondents to the Business Travel Show Europe survey conducted in April 2026, sample a representative cross-section of the buy side: 60 per cent corporate travel buyers, managers or bookers; 19 per cent procurement professionals; 6 per cent meetings and events managers; and 3 per cent EAs and PAs. Three in ten respondents were UK-based, 42 per cent from mainland Europe and the balance drawn from the rest of the world.
Business Travel Show Europe, which will bring 3,000 buyers, suppliers and industry leaders together at ExCeL London on 24-25 June 2026, has signalled the policy debate will dominate the agenda alongside sustainability, AI-led booking and traveller wellbeing.