WHILE continuing economic uncertainty around the world has rattled business confidence, it has not stopped companies — from the smallest widget-maker to the largest financial institution — from sending their battle-tested travelers back on the road this year.


Still, business travelers face a changed world. Corporate travelers are locked between a vexing economic recovery and rising travel costs. They face higher fares, steeper fees and new challenges to navigate, even as their corporations insist that employees stretch travel dollars more than ever.


Air travel drops corporate travelers into a land of a thousand perils. Airline mergers in recent years have reduced competition. Many flights have been canceled, forcing more passengers to connect at big and increasingly crowded hubs. With higher demand and higher costs, airlines have increased ticket prices, both in coach and in business class.


Hotels, too, have raised rates, and are increasingly following the airline business in charging extra fees for a variety of services, including in-room Wi-Fi and access to business centers.


Business travel is still growing this year, but corporations are being more cautious with their travel spending and enforcing greater adherence to travel policies.


“More businesspeople are traveling, but companies are being tighter with their budgets,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and a founder of the Atmosphere Research Group. “Travelers increasingly have to justify their trips, and trips have to be approved by more managers. They have to perform the equivalent of a return-on-investment analysis before they book.”


Yet frustrated as corporate travelers may be, they have never been better armed for the hazards of life on the road.


Mobile technology provides them with up-to-date information and immediate access to a broad range of resources unimaginable just a few years ago. They can make or change plane, hotel or dinner reservations on the fly and perform a thousand other tasks, from boarding check-in to room checkout, all from digital devices.


This access to mobile technology promises in coming years to further change the travel experience and how businesses manage it, corporate travel experts said.


“You can’t say enough about mobile technology and how an expanding and incredible amount of information is provided and available to travelers through their mobile devices and apps,” said Jay Campbell, the editorial director of the BTN Group, which publishes Business Travel News, Travel Procurement magazine, and The Beat, a specialized newsletter, all aimed at corporate travel managers.


The last decade has been tough for business travel. Business trips have dropped by 22 percent since 2000, according to a study by the Global Business Travel Association. Yet travel spending has increased by 3.6 percent during that period, largely because travel has gotten more expensive. The association says that business travelers are making fewer trips and opting to stay fewer nights while maximizing their time in one place.


“Travel managers have to do more with less,” the association said in its latest market survey report.


A report by American Express, released last year, found that American businesses probably cut back on corporate travel a lot more than was necessary in the downturn of 2007 through 2009. And these cutbacks, the report said, probably worsened the recession and “likely hampered business recovery in 2010 and beyond.”


Since then, the recovery has been held back by a series of factors, including the Japanese tsunami and nuclear meltdown, the European debt crisis, renewed geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Persian Gulf and a global rise in energy prices.


IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm, recently revised its forecast for global economic growth, saying it now expected the world economy to expand by 2.8 percent this year, up from the 2.7 percent rate it predicted in March. Global growth is expected to strengthen to 3.6 percent next year, the firm said, and reach 4.3 percent in 2014. But the forecast optimistically assumes a rebound in China and other emerging markets, a pickup in growth in the United States and the end to the recession in the euro zone.