How business travel is adapting to shifting landscapes

Change has been a recurring theme in travel for years now, but nowhere has that malleability been greater than for business travel, which only now is starting to feel on solid footing again after COVID-19.

“A lot has changed since the pandemic and the recovery from it,” said Mat Orrego, CEO of Cornerstone Information Systems. “The way we work has certainly changed, where we work has changed, and thus how we travel has changed tremendously.”

Orrego was speaking in the PhocusWire studio at last month’s Phocuswright Europe conference in Barcelona. Joined by Miriam Moscovici, vice president for partnerships and intelligence at BCD Travel, the pair discussed how much the business travel landscape has been altered — even as it continues to thrive.

“We’re seeing more event-type-driven travel, more people coming together in order to bring teams together because they can’t be together the way they used to be,” Orrego said. “So business travel has fundamentally changed.”

Agreeing with the assessment, Moscovici noted how the new approach is forcing companies to reevaluate their corporate travel policies.

“The remote work, even the ‘bleisure’ angle, these are things that what we find with large or medium-managed programs is they don’t want to touch these issues in their travel policies,” she said. “So while they might want to extend these benefits to their employees, they’re certainly not addressing them in any sort of formal way. They’re very concerned about exposure to new risk.”

The shifts in business travel aren’t all driven by the pandemic. Business decisions continue to be a factor. The announcement in March of American Express GBT’s acquisition of rival CWT, pending regulatory review, furthers the trend of giants getting even bigger that the experts said isn’t likely to stop.

“Consolidation has become a natural thing in this industry,” Orrego said. “This is an industry that’s grown through scale and economies of scale. Everyone wants this product at the lowest possible price point, so the only way to really achieve that is to consolidate.”

“You’re going to continue to see it,” Moscovici added, noting that even new, tech-driven entrants to the sector will need to expand their footprint to compete on a global scale.

“If you want to go after mid-sized business, multinational business, global, large enterprise business, you need to have travel agencies in every country that can work on your behalf and service on your behalf and work in the languages that you need,” she said, adding, “I think it’s really exciting. It shows business is healthy and good and people want to be in it.”

Looking ahead, both experts predict more change, this time driven by sustainability concerns — even if greener travel isn’t the immediate priority for most companies today.

“It’s spoken about a lot — and it’s difficult to figure out. That’s just the reality of it,” Orrego said. “Sustainability is a component of time, and in business travel that’s an important aspect of what you’re doing is your time. … To get on a plane is, by far, the easiest way to get there.”

Moscovici confirmed sustainability is top of mind for her company’s buyers.

“It’s at the top of every agenda, of every meeting we have in business travel,” she said. But her research team’s annual surveys of buys shows that sustainability is ranked last among companies’ priorities.

“I don’t think, though, that that’s the whole story, she added, explaining that companies have pulled back from enacting sustainability objectives while they monitor new regulatory requirements for reporting and new standards for measuring emissions and other factors.

“That all needs to play out,” Moscovici said. “I think we’re going to see the second half of this year is going to be all about reporting and data and matching up your bookings to your emissions and figuring out what you as a company want to do.”

“At the end of the day,” Orrego added, “it always gets driven by some law, by regulation, by legislation, all of that.”

Watch the full discussion in the video below.