Current Trends in Business Travel

So much of the survey data concerning business travel comes from our most logical sources – Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and Business Travel News (BTN). Deloitte is one of the most recognized names in worldwide consulting and their recent survey shows some interesting trends:

• Most travel managers expect their companies’ spend to grow in both 2024 (73%) and 2025 (58%). For those projecting gains, expectations average out to 14% to 15% each year.
• Return to office is still cited as a driver of increased travel, as companies’ balance of remote, in-office, and hybrid work continues to stabilize post-pandemic.
• While fewer workers travel for sales and project work, those who do are on the road frequently. One in five frequent travelers say they travel for sales or project work more than once a month.
• Most say they enjoy business travel, and many take the opportunity to enjoy the travel without the business – two-thirds of corporate travelers say they extended a business trip for leisure in 2023. One in seven say they did so three or more times.
• About three in 10 travelers say they never book trips through corporate online booking tools or agents. Most travelers book at least some of their trips through unmanaged channels. Online travel agency (OTA) bookers are most attracted by better deals, while those who go directly to hotel and airline suppliers are seeking an easier process when their travel plans change. Better digital user experience and loyalty points also play significant roles in platform selection.
• Travel managers surveyed report significant progress over the past year on the sustainability front. On the airline side, there is a notable shift to support sustainable aviation fuel over flight-by-flight emissions comparisons. On the lodging side, certifications are increasingly appearing in the booking path, but chainwide initiatives are getting more attention.
• Conferences, trade shows, and exhibitions are playing a big role in travel growth, and more than six in 10 business travelers expect to attend at least one in 2024. While fewer say they will take client-focused trips for sales and project work, these types of trips are considerably more frequent as corporate travel steadily closes the gap with its pre-pandemic scale, travel manager respondents report some continued influence from the stabilization of pandemic-era changes, including the openness of international travel and workers returning to the office. But the role of those return-to-normal metrics is shrinking, as signs point toward growth led by conference attendance and client sales and project work.
• Industry gatherings, which offer the opportunity to meet with many clients and prospects in a short time, hold an increasingly prominent place on respondents’ agendas. A quarter of travel managers say that conference attendance was the biggest driver of travel growth in 2023 and expect that to continue in 2024. Half rank conferences among the top two growth drivers. Six in 10 travelers say they expect to travel for a conference in 2024, significantly ahead of all other trip types, in terms of number of travelers 

While conference travel is high incidence, sales and client project work are bigger drivers of frequency. Among frequent travelers, about one in five say that they traveled once per month or more in the first half of 2024 for client project work (23%) or sales and client relationship building (21%), compared to just 13% for conferences and exhibitions. Travel managers’ expectations for increased spend are led by high-frequency client travel, alongside high-incidence conference and exhibition travel (figure 2). Budget owners (those who play a role in travel decisions at the team level) rank live event attendance and client demand for meetings as the top drivers of increased travel (figure 3). Expectations for spend growth remain low in areas that are more easily replaced by virtual meetings, as described in Deloitte’s Why We Fly Matrix,⁴ affirming that technology is likely having some dampening effect on the growth of corporate travel.

Maybe unsurprisingly, travel managers hope that booking compliance can help control costs — 55% of those surveyed cite compliance as a top cost-control measure, ahead of all other options, including encouraging cheaper flight and hotel options. But just over half (56%) of travelers who are aware their company has a corporate booking tool or agency say they always book trips through these managed channels.

The rise of user-friendly online leisure travel platforms has challenged corporate travel booking compliance for several years. But contrary to what some might expect, “rogue” booking (outside of managed corporate channels) is not led by young employees turning to slicker consumer tech. Gen Xers and baby boomers are actually significantly less likely to say they always use managed channels (figure 6). Awareness is part of the picture, as Gen Xers and boomers are nearly twice as likely as Gen Zers and millennials to say, as far as they know, their company has no managed channel. But even accounting for awareness, older travelers are more likely to say they never use company channels. Age is a much stronger predicter of booking compliance than travel frequency.

Travelers go “rogue” to book flights and hotels at a similar rate. A similar share of rogue air bookers go to OTAs and airlines’ direct channels, while on the hotel side, direct channels are more popular (figure 7). Younger and less frequent travelers favor OTAs, while older and more frequent travelers drive more of the direct booking (figure 7).

Overall, the biggest driver of booking directly with suppliers is easier management of trip changes, followed by earning loyalty points. On the OTA side, deals are the biggest driver by a big margin, followed by easier shopping and change management. Boomer travelers, nearly half of whom say they book flights and hotels direct, are most motivated by change management and loyalty.

For those of us in the business there are a number of findings that are very encouraging.  Business travel continues to grow, many business travelers are combining leisure travel with their business trips (bleisure), and groups and meetings stand out as a growing market segment. As an interesting aside, although there are continued efforts to comply with sustainability goals by the suppliers, Business Travel News recently reported that most individual business travelers and travel managers still do not consider sustainability as a priority and continue to look toward controlling expenses as a primary directive.

Mark Altman
Forte Business Travel Solutions
516-624-0500 x5072
maltman@travelsavers.com

Source: Deloitte Insights, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights.html?icid=bottom_insights, Upward climb with uphill struggles: 2024 Deloitte corporate travel study, posted by Deloitte Consumer Industry Center on July 16, 2024. Click here for a direct link to the article.