The Economist March 26th 2022 61
BusinessCorporatetravelThe return of the road-warrior
S
harp attire and a purposeful stride.
The lefthand turn on the plane away
from the cheap seats. Skipping the in
flight film to refine a presentation. Over
the past two pandemic years these obvious
giveaways of the globetrotting executive
became a rare sight. According to the Glo
bal Business Travel Association (gbta), a
trade body, worldwide spending on flights,
hotels, car hire, restaurants and other ex
pensable services fell from $1.4trn in 2019
to $660bn in 2020 as a result of covid19
lockdowns and tough limits on crossbor
der movement.
Despite fresh disruptions, from corona
virus outbreaks and a tragic plane crash in
China to Russia’s war in Ukraine, many
places are relaxing travel restrictions.
America and Europe are mostly open for
business. On March 21st Hong Kong said it
would admit vaccinated arrivals from nine
countries, including America and Britain,
from April 1st and relax onerous hotel
quarantine requirements. Business travel
lers are once again visible at airports, on
aeroplanes and in hotels. The gbta expects
corporate travel to rebound sharply thisyear and return to its prepandemic peak
by 2024 (see chart 1 on next page).
That is a relief to fullservice airlines,
which counted on business travellers for
30% of revenues and a higher proportion
of profits, and big global hotel chains,
which earned twothirds of their sales
from executive guests. For corporate road
warriors the news is more mixed. Remain
ing covid19 measures, readjusted travel
budgets, changing work patterns, height
ened risk awareness by companies and in
dividuals: all are changing business travelin profound ways. Some of the changes
will make travelling for work a more pleas
ant experience. Others will not.
Throwing your laptop, minitoiletries
and clothes into a wheelie bag used to be a
pretty universal corporate ritual. Hence
forth whether or not you do will depend
more on whom you work for, your role,
where you are going and the purpose of
your trip. Scott Davies, boss of the Institute
of Travel Management, another industry
body, explains that overall travel budgets
used to be set annually, often against broad
commercial objectives. As they are rebuilt
after the covid lull, he expects many trips
to be considered on a casebycase basis.
Many marginal jaunts won’t clear the hur
dle (see chart 2), especially as companies
get serious about reducing their carbon
footprints, which swell with every air mile.
Some trips will be quick to return. In
deed, even at the height of the pandemic
essential business travel continued; man
aging and maintaining remote oil wells,
large infrastructure or factories far from
the head office is impossible over the inter
net. The share of travel spending by manu
facturing, utilities or construction firms
edged up from 48% in 2019 to 51% in 2020,
according to the gbta. Companies for
which facetoface client meetings are de
sirable to maintain relationships and vital
to drum up new business, such as finance
and professionalservices firms, have been
swift to get workers back on the road. An
ecdotal evidence suggests that as soon as
one company heard that a competitor wasC HANGI, CHARLES DE GAULLE AND HEATHROW
The business trip is back. Business travel as you knew it is not→Alsointhissection
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