A new report by forecasting agency Globetrender and travel and expense tool Cytric Easy by Amadeus has identified a series of key business travel trends for the year ahead.
The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – alongside evolving technology and an increasing awareness of environmental concerns – has driven corporate travellers to be “increasingly discerning when they travel, as they seek to derive the maximum value from each trip”.
Blended itineraries (an evolution of the existing ‘bleisure’ trip where a weekend is tagged onto a weekday work trip) are seeing “the relaxation and personalization of once rigid corporate travel policies that now place employee experience at the heart”, while teambuilding days away are also evolving into longer “strategic getaways”.
Sustainability concerns are being taken increasingly serious, with a survey of 896 senior decision-makers commissioned by Amadeus revealing that 90 percent of travel companies had a strategy in place to reach environmental sustainability objectives or are planning to implement one in 2024.
This feeds through to a demand for workers to justify business trips, with employees increasingly ‘Objective Stacking’ – arranging trips to fulfil multiple goals rather than just flying in and out for a single meeting or event.
Meanwhile new technology trends include artificial intelligence personal assistants (or ‘AI PAs’), which can help advise on itinerary options and guide users through company travel policies; and the use of virtual cards and digital expensing to eliminate the “cumbersome manual management of expense forms and the constant juggle of paper receipts”.
Jenny Southan, CEO and founder of Globetrender said that “If there is one word to sum up business travel in 2024, that will be ‘discernment’”.
“Employees no longer want to sacrifice areas of their personal lives to be constantly on the road, and companies need to balance the fulfillment of financial and ESG targets, which will mean all parties need to be more selective about what trips they commit to.”
To read the report in full, click here.
Business Traveller recently put together its own list of future travel trends, from biometrics and Sustainable Aviation Fuel to carbon tracking, “multi-modal” journeys and the growth of co-working. To read our feature in full, see:
