LNER issues pledges to encourage business travel

FACE-TO-FACE meetings remain crucial, says LNER as it aims to “bring three-quarters of preCOVID business travel demand back by the end of 2022”.

The East Coast Main Line operator is recording 5% growth in business travel week-on-week and does not expect this to abate in 2022.

“We anticipate the lengthening of business-led trips in 2022 and that spending will exceed prepandemic levels, with combined business and leisure stays,” the company said.

Based on specially commissioned research with regular business travellers and in-depth interviews with some of the UK’s largest travel buyers, LNER found that 89% of office workers are confident that face-to-face meeting will become the norm by the end of the year.

It also found that 60% of people see business travel as essential to new business, with face-toface meetings as a means of ‘foreshortening the deal cycle’.

“Our conversations have found that face-to-face meetings are more important than ever as people continue to reconnect and recover after a challenging couple of years,” said LNER MD David Horne.

The company reports business rail travel at currently around half of pre-COVID levels, adding: “Therefore, on the basis of this research, we are making four new pledges to place the needs of the business traveller at the heart of our rail network.”

The pledges are:

■ A ‘Business on the Move’ customer experience, as champions of business travel mobility.

■ ‘Bringing business back’, fuelling business travel with the right products and offers.

■ ‘Partnership’, using consultation groups to understand new ‘days of the week’ and ‘times of the day’ travel windows, new flexibility needs, and multi-modal requirements.

■ ‘Sustainable Champions’ beyond the rail sector, sharing best practice and challenging ourselves.