Long-haul business travel: uncertainty, the real sword of Damocles

For two years now, business travel has been affected by successive waves of the covid pandemic. But for the first time in a long time, we are hearing more and more voices, from scientific experts to players in the tourism industry, expressing cautious optimism that the crisis is over.

In an analysis published at the beginning of January, Olivier Ponti, Vice President Analyses of the consultancy firm ForwardKeys described that business travel was slowly but surely making a comeback. " We saw this very clearly in Europe, where intra-European business travel rose steadily from April until the new wave of cases of covid last November.he explains. Admittedly, business travel is recovering more slowly than the leisure segment. And this recovery may appear a little chaotic. But overall, the gap between leisure and business volumes is narrowing. For example, business travel reached almost 70 % of 2019 levels last October. "

The latest Omicron wave has effectively affected business travel since December. However, most experts remain confident that this is just a temporary "depression". That's right, the combination of omicron contamination (more contagious but less dangerous) and vaccination campaigns should lead to the much sought-after collective immunity..

Collective immunity and quarantines

The World Health Organisation even recently estimated that Europe and North America could soon achieve this famous immunity.. In its latest analysis of airline seat capacity, consultant OAG forecasts a sharp increase in supply from April onwards.

Except that many countries in the world do not share this optimistic vision. This is often the case in Asia or North Africa. For business travellers who have to go outside the borders of the European Union, there is still one major uncertainty. Having to quarantine yourself in certain countries as soon as you test positive for covid. Or being subjected, without prior information, to a series of restrictions adopted by a country at the last minute.

Let's take a textbook case, even if it concerns a leisure trip, reported by Javier Roig, General Manager for Southern Europe and the Middle East at Finnair : " I had to deal with the anxieties of a customer travelling to Thailand with her family. Vaccinated and covid negative on departure, she tested positive on arrival in the country. As a result, she had to spend ten days in quarantine in hospital without showing any symptoms - she tested negative on the second day - and her husband and son, who had become contact cases, had to stay in quarantine in a hotel. A wasted stay and relatively little recourse" he says.

What happened to this family could turn into the same nightmare for an individual businessman. So how can these potential problems be avoided? Voyages d'Affaires asked the insurer Europ Assistance, the travel manager American Express GBT and an individual businessman how they manage to deal with the "Russian roulette" that the various regulations of a long-haul trip can represent. With one certainty: there is no such thing as "zero risk" for the company or the businessman.