Business travel a chore? Don’t believe it

TravelMole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

The industry has been awash with surveys on business travel, with predictions that it will diminish because of video conferencing and that no-frills carriers are only used by a fraction of business travellers. I wouldn’t take either of them too seriously.

According to the 10^th annual Barclaycard Business Travel Survey, individual days away for business will decline to 2.0 per week in 2015, from 2.4 in 2005-06, due to the increased use of technology such as video conferencing. At least it makes a change from five years ago, when everyone was predicting that business travel would become extinct as people gathered around webcams to talk to each other.

I actually think the amount of business travel will increase, as it becomes easier and more convenient.

Of course, most business can be conducted via a video conference. Most of it can be done over the telephone. But the writers of these reports forget that most business people want to travel and will find a way to justify it.

Success in business is about building relationships, which tends to be done through endless hours on the golf course, at dinner and over numerous drinks. It’s that grey area between networking and not-working which is so important. Business people love the opportunity to get away from their families, sometimes with interesting travel partners, stay in five-star hotels and live grandly on company expenses.

The irony is that although travel is a very important part of a business person’s work, that person is not actually working for most of the time that they are away. Of course, they’ll moan about the long flights (where they get upgraded and drink champagne for hours, safe in the knowledge that no-one can contact them) and how hard they worked while they were away, but how many choose to switch to a job where they are office based for their entire working year?

Meanwhile, a Carlson Wagonlit survey claims that fewer than one in ten European business travellers regularly use no-frills carriers for work trips and almost 50 per cent have never stepped foot in them.

As the travel management companies surveyed would prefer their clients to use more expensive airlines, the phrase ‘they-would-say-that-wouldn’t-they?’ springs to mind.

If you need flexible tickets because you’re constantly changing your plans, or you book at the last minute and insist on flying from Heathrow then, fair enough, the no-frills airlines won’t serve your purpose.

But I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who run their own, very modest, businesses, and the no-frills airlines have been a godsend, allowing them, with a little planning, to fly around Europe for a fraction of the cost a few years ago.

As a footnote, does anyone think that Thomson might be a little worried that high street travel agents are giving them the cold shoulder?

Why else would it pay for expensive advertisements in the national and regional press, telling holidaymakers that ‘if your travel agent does not offer you a Thomson holiday, you’re probably paying too much’.  Clearly, many retailers aren’t offering Thomson and it’s causing a bit of a stir in the new Luton headquarters.

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