BUSINESS travel, when it returns, will likely be initiated for different reasons, have different requirements for planning, and travellers and corporates will place value on different considerations.
Amadeus’ recent report “Reboot. Recharge. Rethink Business Travel”, based on interviews conducted with some 100 executives from business travel agencies across the world, explored factors and trends that will influence the timeline for global business travel recovery.
“The new needs of [business] travellers will be driven by safety, trust, confidence, access to right information at the right time and less on price,” said Renaud Nicolle (pictured left), Amadeus’ vice president of business travel, APAC.
He said this brings to focus the increased value of travel management companies and planners. “Booking will be but a small value to travellers. Advice will be more important,” he said.
He urged travel management companies to add value by bringing back a sense of confidence to travellers to get back on the road.
Technology will play a key part, he added. Creating a frictionless experience, even with all the new regulations and potential disruptions, will be key.
Amadeus is already honing its several years old duty of care solution called Mobile Messenger – an application for corporations to track and communicate with their travellers – so that it will meet the needs of the traveller in the new environment.
“We have brought this solution to the front end and partnered with Riskline to provide us real time information about restrictions and travel requirements from the various countries such as what medical tests may be needed before travel” explained Nicolle.
Nicolle also stressed the importance of collaboration in restarting travel. Collaboration, he said, is important between industry players and governments to define the right protocols and standards. He said Amadeus is engaged with many tourism organisations, IATA, airlines and airports to collaborate and advance the concept of a digital health passport.
Once the protocols and standards are put in place, Amadeus will be looking to integrate that into their departure control solutions so that information flows seamlessly and the check-in staff can use that to enable check-in and boarding.
“This is how we will connect the dots and play our part in the ecosystem,” he said.
Nicolle said business travel has been resilient in the marine and energy industries – both considered essential services even during the pandemic. The seamen industry in Philippines have already up to 50% of pre-Covid levels. Other professional services industries like education and healthcare have actually adapted well to digital solutions for meetings and will thus likely see slower recovery for business travel.
Behaviours around travel will also change. He said travellers will want to be more organised and think better and be more focused about each trip they make. They may group meetings together when in the past, they might have taken several trips to achieve the same load.
While sustaining current business relationships may be possible using virtual meeting tools, Nicolle surmises that developing new prospects are better done face to face. As to internal company meetings, he said reviewing budgets could be done online, but meetings to reenergize teams, for purposes of planning and strategizing are still better done in person. As such, Nicolle sees corporations taking a hybrid view to meetings.
“Some meetings like internal reviews and training might go away – those are working well remotely,” said Nicolle.
But there will be new opportunities for travel, he said. With the work-from-home culture becoming more entrenched, the concept of work-from-anywhere will take hold. In other words, some people will decide to move or work from remote locations and the workforce will become more disseminated. There will therefore be a new need for employees to travel to the main office for occasional meetings.
Inevitably, travel policies will become more stringent and even complex. “There will be increasing levels of approvals for travel. Travel management companies will see their workload increase as they will now need to provide a lot of new information,” said Nicolle.
“Business travel will come back more sophisticated.”
Featured image credit: Getty Images
January 19, 2021 at 08:44PM
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