An offsite budget can rise even when the trip costs no more per person. Before approving the increase, an employer needs to know whether it is paying for more participants, a different experience or both.
Revolut India reports broadly unchanged per-person offsite spending year on year, but higher total expenditure alongside headcount growth. The remote-first company describes collaboration and problem-solving as purposes of its gatherings.
The Breakdown
Consider a hypothetical team spending ₹20,000 per participant. An offsite for 40 people costs ₹8 lakh; the same per-person budget for 60 people costs ₹12 lakh. Total spending has risen 50%, without an upgrade for any individual. These are illustrative numbers, not Revolut’s figures.
Now keep attendance at 40 but raise the allowance to ₹25,000. The total becomes ₹10 lakh, a 25% increase driven entirely by spending per participant. The two changes call for different explanations: who should attend, and what the extra money buys.
In a real comparison, include the same types of expense in both years. Including flights in one budget but excluding them from the other would obscure the decision before the discussion even begins.
Why This Matters
For an Indian employer, the next question is what colleagues are meant to accomplish together. A product team might leave a working session with an agreed specification, an owner and a deadline. A reward trip has a different purpose, so measuring it by the number of project decisions would be misplaced.
Write the intended result into the event brief before selecting the venue. Afterwards, review whether it happened and what remains unfinished. A completed action list is useful evidence of follow-through, but it should not automatically be presented as a financial return on the trip.
The Big Picture
GBTA’s August 2026 forecast projects global business-travel spending growth of 7.2% in 2026, against 1.3% growth in trips, assuming travel networks gradually normalise after disruption. It covers 72 countries and 44 industries; the accompanying May 2026 traveller survey had about 4,700 respondents across 66 markets.
Those are global projections, not estimates of Indian offsite costs or proof that gatherings improve performance. They cannot establish why an individual employer’s bill changed. That explanation still needs its own participant count, itinerary and comparable cost records.
The Crunch
Approve the purpose and the spending together, but review them separately. The budget explains what the gathering costs; the event brief establishes what the team expects to achieve.
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