Although there has been a theme of sustained recovery for many businesses since the lows of the coronavirus pandemic, that hasn’t automatically been the case for everyone. 

Indeed, according to one recent story from Consultancy.uk, there are indications that airlines previously dependent on business travel may be required to adapt their business models to help ensure their longer-term survival.  

As the cost-of-living crisis intensifies, airlines can’t depend on the old certainties 

For decade after decade, airlines have counted on business travel for a significant chunk of their revenue. Although there have always been fewer business travellers than those travelling for other reasons such as holidays, the tendency for business travellers to pay higher rates and travel more frequently meant they accounted for as much as three-quarters of airlines’ profits. 

Historically, the tax-deductibility of business travel has also meant that firms have often been prepared to continue paying high prices even during times of economic uncertainty in order to secure last-minute flights that don’t present the need to stop anywhere mid-journey. 

So, during a cost-of-living crisis like the present, one might have imagined that even as recreational travellers cut back on their spending on flights, airlines would still be able to depend on sustained demand from those embarking on business trips. 

However, this is where the ‘COVID-19 factor’ comes in. With closed borders and national lockdowns around the world at the height of the pandemic having forced businesses and independent professionals alike to adapt to alternative ways of communicating and collaborating, those habits are relatively ‘baked in’ now. 

It means that amid the coming recession, there seems a fair prospect that levels of expenditure on business travel may never return to what they were immediately prior to the COVID-19 crisis. 

Indeed, spending by business travellers across the globe reached approximately $1.4 trillion in 2019, but the subsequent lockdowns saw such expenditure plummet to its lowest level since 2005. Expenditure on business travel did increase by 5.5% on a year-on-year basis since borders were reopened, to reach $697 billion in 2021, although this naturally paled in comparison to the figure for just two years earlier. 

Many adults look increasingly likely to abandon business trips altogether 

To gain an insight into attitudes towards business travel in a ‘post-COVID-19’ world and during the cost-of-living crisis, the global decision intelligence company, Morning Consult, polled over 16,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region between autumn 2021 and the summer of 2022. 

What the organisation discovered was that across all markets, an ever-higher proportion of adults now believed they had taken their last business trip. This attitude was especially pronounced in France, where 58% said they would no longer travel for work, followed in the ranking by the UK (55%) and Germany (50%). 

Morning Consult indicated that this likely reflected the different ways in which work was done in the post-lockdown world. Professionals may now once again be able to travel across national borders, but many of them have found they can provide effective services – for example, through the use of video-conferencing software – without the need to be present on-site. 

On a backdrop of continued high levels of digital home working even after the coronavirus situation has long receded from much of the news agenda, 76% of those questioned by Morning Consult indicated that from now on, they would only travel for leisure purposes. Meanwhile, the number of people travelling for business declined by 10 points in the spring of this year. 

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