The health crisis has not dampened business travellers' appetite for international mobility, and the business opportunities it brings: this is one of the lessons to be learned from the study recently published by the GBTA. According to this 21st survey, 77% of companies indicate that their employees are "willing" or "very willing" to travel on business in the current climate. Conversely, only 4% of those surveyed are not willing, 12TP3T are neutral and 7% are unsure.
The trend in travel expenditure...
The health crisis has not dampened business travellers' appetite for international mobility, and the business opportunities it brings: this is one of the lessons to be learned from the study recently published by the GBTA. According to this 21st survey, 77% of companies indicate that their employees are "willing" or "very willing" to travel on business in the current climate. Conversely, only 4% of those surveyed are not willing, 12TP3T are neutral and 7% are unsure.
The trend in travel expenditure bears this out, with the majority of companies (72%) seeing their travel budgets increase "a little" or "a lot" in June 2021 compared with May. In one in five cases (20%), this expenditure remained unchanged, and only 6% of those surveyed reported a decrease. Nevertheless, this upturn in business travel primarily concerns domestic travel : " Non-essential international business travel continues to lag behind, with one in four GBTA members (26%) usually or sometimes authorised to undertake non-essential international business travel. "say the authors of the report.
There is clearly an appetite to resume non-essential business travel and face-to-face meetings to promote collaboration, networking and business opportunities.
" There is clearly an appetite to resume non-essential business travel and face-to-face meetings to promote collaboration, networking and business opportunities. "says Suzanne Neufang, CEO of the GBTA. " And, interestingly, it doesn't seem that cost savings are necessarily a key factor in getting travellers back on the road. However, government policies and restrictions on international travel continue to hamper progress in pursuing the activities that are so important to the conduct of business. "says Suzanne Neufang. In fact, according to the GBTA survey, half of those questioned (52%) said that government restrictions on international business travel continue to have an impact on their companies' ability to carry out important business functions such as networking, business development, planning and sales meetings.
