What is business travel?
Business travel is always there since the time people started trading with each other. Many of today’s roads started as thoroughfares for people taking their merchandise to a weekly market. And now business travels have become a regular aspect of everyday work life in many lines of business.
One may conduct business travel for plenty of reasons. For example, a handshake is still the best way to meet and get to know someone, much better than Skype calls. Man-to-Man conversation increases the chances of good communication bringing on a sense of mutual agreement and trustworthiness. You may also want to show your leadership skills. The business tourism is gaining the attention of tourist companies because employers tend to spend more when their company is paying. The growth of business traveling has increased by more than 5% in the last 5 years due to globalization.
Appended below is the list of top 10 latest business travel news & trends.
1-The Power of Being There In Person
Despite the video and digital collaboration tools available nowadays with their benefits, the importance of face-to-face meetings remains pivotal and critical to business success. Many organizations across the globe are recognizing the benefits of traveling for face-to-face meetings. These meetings, in many cases, proved to be more productive and fruitful for business as compared to digital collaboration especially if you have to converse with a person who doesn’t speak your native language. When a client observes your body language aligned with your words, it gives you more credibility.
2-Travelers Demand An End-To-End Experience
A traveler needs flexible solutions if anything goes wrong whether it is a last-minute change in schedule or delay due to weather. All tools available to travelers must provide solutions for their demands i.e. booking, traveling, expensing. The availability of all these tools will help the employees to experience better while traveling which would probably lead to bridge the gaps in information needed for company leaders.
3- Self-booking
Availability of the more and more travel-related sites and apps is resulting in the trend of self-booking, this may also provide you the flexibility of travel and hotel booking according to one’s personalized needs and demands.
Finding the right routine while traveling can dramatically reduce stress while making your time more productive.
4-Bleisuring
A new trend is shown where employees combine work trips with personal trips, creating challenges for companies and travel managers. Policy formation to avoid these non-work travel expenses is an emerging task for travel managers and companies.
Without having a clearly defined business-pleasure policy in place, one company may find itself in a situation where it is exposed to potentially negative reputational, financial and legal impacts if something does happen to a traveler. Including business plus travel policies into your business travel policies may reduce the risk of these threats.
5- Rethinking Corporate Travel Expenses
Often ignored area of managing travel expenses is coming into the light now. Innovations are emerging to submit and reconcile travel expenses that will help streamline the expense process for travelers and travel managers.
One tip is to plan your travel and manage thins accordingly to reduce cost. Planning may provide you the ample time to compare the costs of different service providers.
6-Digital integration
In the future we will see the digital integration in travel-related services such as travel news. More apps and innovations on websites will help create better and flexible booking solutions for travelers.
Implementing tech into daily tasks with less dependence on people is a trend in the travel industry now.
Virtual assistance apps which you can use through your cell phones like Siri and Alexa are enhancing customers’ experiences through digital check-ins, keyless entry, etc.
Besides checking your hotel before checking-in through VR has become a new trend. To get a clear idea of the hotel and the facilities being offered, the business travelers tend to check the rooms plus the business conference rooms through virtual-reality.
7- More women business travelers
The number of women traveling for business purposes is increasing with the rise of gender equality around the globe. Travel agents/managers must keep in mind the needs and concerns of their women travelers- especially in regards to safety. A study shows that many women business travelers have experienced harassment or mistreatment while traveling. In future customized arrangements may be needed for women travelers to avoid these instances whether for business traveling or hotel bookings.
8-Physical and Mental Health during traveling after COVID-19
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 worldwide has affected international and domestic travel significantly. According to travel news, in many countries traveling is still restricted and, in many cases, banned. COVID-19 means that many of us are staying at home and doing less traveling.
The travel industry will face huge challenges to restore the confidence of travelers in traveling. Steps will be needed to make traveling safe for the people internationally and domestically.
9- Wellness
Wellness is another growing concern among travelers. Many business travelers prefer to bring their meal in flights and many not require alcohol their preferred drink while in flight. Sanitation and cleanliness are the demand of many business travelers even in economy class. The need for this is more evident after the outbreak of COVID-19.
10-Brand loyalty
With people have more booking options than ever at their fingertips; branch loyalty is becoming a past fairy tale. Still many among the traveling industry that customer loyalty programs may help increases travel agency’s revenue. This may work in special environments. To retain your customer many agencies, launch schemes of points, and membership discounts. These benefits may earn you massive loyalty sign-ups, but the problem is, these same customers may also be signing up with every one of your competitors. As it is now very easy to compare the travel expenses of many agencies with many options available at the fingertips of travelers. So, offering valuable incentives may be the difference.
The service you provide, across all touchpoints, is more memorable than the points you can offer.
2 thoughts on “Top 10 Latest Business Travel Trends: Where In The World You Would Travel”