When it comes to predicting the return of business travel, the conventional wisdom is simply all over the map right now, ranging from this summer to 2023 to maybe never. However, one theme that almost all interested parties seem to agree on is that whenever we do see a return of business trips and commercial travel, it will not look and feel exactly the same as it once did.
While the timing of the rebound remains hard to predict, experts say business travel 2.0 will likely include new technologies that reflect the current cost, health and environmental considerations that have emerged during the COVID era.
For example, the director of crisis management at BCD Travel, a Netherlands-based management firm with more than 15,000 employees and $30 billion in revenue, told Travel Weekly that “digital health passports” — including IBM’s Digital Health Pass and CommonPass — are likely to become the norm for frequent fliers, rather than the exception.
Per the app’s website: “The Commons Project, The World Economic Forum and a broad coalition of public and private partners are collaborating to launch CommonPass, a trusted, globally interoperable platform for people to document their COVID-19 status (health declarations/PCR tests/vaccinations) to satisfy country entry requirements while protecting their health data privacy.”
Vaccine Considerations
The rollout of the COVID vaccine continues to be the most important factor in the decision-making of most travelers, whether for business or pleasure. According to a survey conducted last month by BCD Travel, 60 percent of business travelers said they expected to be traveling regularly within the next six months, with 90 percent expecting to do so by the end of this year.
In an interview with PYMNTS, Nick Careen, senior vice president of airport, passenger, cargo and security at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said the stage is set for digital solutions to help validate and authenticate passengers, and also to serve as a validation of COVID-related testing and travel requirements.
As Careen explained, “the Travel Pass is pretty simple — and it’s intentionally designed to be that way.” He explained that the Travel Pass is based on existing technology (both hardware and software). Once it is available for download by the end of February or early March, the app will alert a traveler when he or she will have to show proof of COVID test results or vaccination.
“You would share that information on your travel journey, whether with the airline or with the government,” Careen told PYMNTS. He noted that governments have been “very cooperative in identifying what they believe they will require” in terms of documentation, though nothing has been mandated. According to Careen, the concept of digital identification and documentation has been gaining traction for years, as has the use of biometric data in the service of establishing those identities.
Forecast: Partly Cloudy
The hope is that the IATA’s efforts make fliers feel safer. It was addressed at least in part last week, in predictions made by Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian.
“All indications are [that] corporate travel is ready to start coming back, and will come back pretty aggressively beginning the second half of this year,” he told analysts and investors after reporting fourth-quarter earnings.
While Bastian said he was “encouraged by the progress on the vaccine front,” he also said that pre-COVID travel volumes and practices may never fully return. To that point, the BCD survey showed that 74 percent of business travelers said they would probably or definitely get vaccinated, and were also interested in better testing and treatment regimens.
The Cost Calculus
The whole “Zoom factor” is another back-office consideration that is not likely to disappear anytime soon, as CFOs have had almost a year to analyze the cost savings achieved by not flying to see customers, or sending one person instead of five, with the rest connecting via video conference.
Of course, those in the sales and marketing departments continue to politely disagree with this notion, and insist that once it’s clear and acceptable for clients and customers to meet in person again, business trips will take off.
“The reasons for business travel have not changed — we still depend on personal connections to get work done — and for that reason, we can expect to see a rebound in travel as soon as it’s safe and people feel comfortable,” Steve Black, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Topia, wrote in a recent column for Phocuswire.
As such, Black said businesses need to prepare for a “new normal” that will include a “host of complexities” around keeping costs and risks low. “Companies will need to be prepared with a sound strategy and technology to support it, in order to stay on top of the competition,” he wrote.
Big Bets On Business Travel
The timing of the recovery, whether it’s for the economy as a whole or business travel specifically, remains a question of “when” rather than “if.” Although it’s still early, with “a tough winter ahead of us,” as Bastian said, a few noted investors are already placing bets on this beaten-down industry.
Elad Gil, for one, has just put $155 million into travel software maker TripActions, which had to cut 25 percent of its staff to survive the slump. “I thought it was wise to invest while things still looked tough for travel, because it would be much more expensive to invest when things come rushing back,” he explained.
At the same time, TravelPerk Co-founder and CEO Avi Meir sees recent holiday travel stats as a leading indicator. “There was a lot of traveling for leisure over the holidays,” Meir said in an interview with PYMNTS, noting that business trips could bounce back just as quickly. “I would encourage everybody in the industry to get ready for an above-average second half of 2021. I would get ready, in a positive way, for lots of volume. Whether you do expense, payments or travel, get ready.”
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