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Business travel sector suffering ‘sharp’ decline
Traditional business travel methods such as flying, car hire and overnight hotel stays are now in “steep and steady†decline.
Even budget airlines are beginning to suffer as much as their mainstream scheduled rivals, according to the Guild of Travel Management Companies.
The guild’s quarterly transactional survey shows that the downward trend in business related air travel has been falling since the third quarter of 2008.
The latest statistics reveal the trend is now hitting every segment of the aviation sector with overall air travel 11% down on the corresponding figures for last year.
The regular quarterly survey is made up of the invoiced transactions of all guild members each quarter and the number of BSP (Billing Settlement Plan) UTP’s (Unit Transaction Price) processed by the UK’s top 30 travel management companies for the same period.
While air travel is down, rail travel is up by 13% year on year and 7% up on the corresponding period in 2008.
This reflects business travellers increasingly changing their booking and travel patterns to incorporate rail trips into travel itineraries, possibly at the expense of hotels, airlines and car rental.
Car hire, which has been in an almost constant downward spin since the third quarter or 2008, suffered a further 17% decline in the returns for the second quarter 2009, marking an annual drop in car hire business bookings of 13%.Â
The hotel sector, which has largely held steady over the past year, performed particularly poorly in the quarter – down 13% against the corresponding quarter of 2008.
The slump in hotel bookings was the single largest drop for the sector in more than two years and highlights that business travellers are becoming ever more cost conscious.
“There has been much debate recently in the TMC community about the recession and how it may impact the behaviour of business travellers and corporate bookers in the future,†said guild chief executive Philip Carlisle.
“This latest quarterly transaction survey shows clearly that the behaviour patterns of business travellers are changing and those changes are impacting every segment of the sector.
“I think these statistics show that the face of business travel may be very different when we come out of the recession.â€
by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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