THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS TRAVEL

There have been many headlines over the past two years saying business travel has changed forever as a result of the pandemic, and many corporates have said they will cut travel in the future. The TMCs we have spoken to distinguish between large companies and small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The former are slower to begin to travel at volume, the latter are ready to travel now.

Steve Banks, chief commercial officer at Agiito, says, “A lot of trips have been replaced by virtual meetings and every organisation has had to take a cautious approach to travel so the decision and willingness around travel now sits with the individual. Smaller companies are coming back more quickly. Large organisations have risk departments and where any risk exists they do everything possible to mitigate it. The biggest issue we’ve had with Covid is how do you quantify the risk, and brand reputation is taken very seriously as well, so companies become risk averse and inhibit travel returning as quickly as it could do.”

Gary Povey, head of sales at Reed and Mackay, says, “The bigger enterprise clients will be slower to get back the level of travel they had before. The SMEs are already travelling. Overall I think it will be 2025 before we get back to that level, but at the same time we are bringing new business on because clients have been let down by existing players.”