New research found a third of corporate travel managers surveyed across Northern Europe, believe their business travel programmes will recover within six months.
The research, conducted by hotel group Accor, suggested that corporate travel buyers are feeling positive about the future of the market which they believe will be restarted with an increase in domestic corporate travel.
Of the 122 corporates who were surveyed, only seven per cent said they believe it will take longer than 12 months for their business travel programmes to get back on track, with 21 per cent predicting it will take less than three months.
“We can’t predict when we will be in a post-Covid environment, but it is likely domestic business travel will pick up quicker than international travel simply because there are fewer governmental restrictions," Jonathan Pettifer, director of corporate sales at Accor UK & Ireland, told M&IT.
"In the short term, there will be pent up demand driving bookings from business travellers desperate to meet clients, customers and prospects face-to-face. In the medium to long term, much will depend on the speed of recovery.
"However, even downturns have drivers for business travel as there is often market consolidation that requires complex negotiations between players and their advisers, which often needs to be conducted face-to-face.”
The survey also found that 75 per cent of corporate travel planners weren’t intending on changing the categories of the hotels they booked in future; however, traveller welfare was identified as an increasing priority.
While location (38 per cent), followed by price (25 per cent) remained the top priority for the majority of business travel buyers, more than a 22 per cent of survey respondents ranked additional sanitary measures and Covid-19 protection as their top priority.
“Organisations may move event bookings for conferences and exhibitions based on destinations that have low infection rates and appear to have handled the pandemic well, but that would be the case anyway because those are the destinations governments will allow their citizens to travel to with fewest restrictions," Pettifer added.
"More widely business travel is based on trade opportunities and the location of facilities, so we don’t envisage it will deviate hugely from established patterns."
A desire to travel led Holly Patrick to the business meetings and events world and she’s never looked back. Holly takes a particular interest in event sustainability and creating a diverse and inclusive industry. When she’s not working, she can be found rolling skating along Brighton seafront listening to an eclectic playlist, featuring the likes of Patti Smith, Sean Paul, and Arooj Aftab.
