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Companies I’m going to spend more money on travel this year.According to the 2024 Deloitte Corporate Travel Report.
But corporate travel is changing, with increased spending coming primarily from business trips to events and in-person client visits, and travelers tending to stay extra nights for leisure. A trend that shows no signs of slowing.
“The objectives of corporate travel have changed since 2019,” says Eileen Crowley, who leads Deloitte’s U.S. audit and assurance transportation and hospitality services practice. Hotel Dive caught up with Crowley to talk about those changes, how corporate travelers feel about them, and the trends that will impact the industry in 2024 and beyond.
Post-pandemic recovery
Deloitte predicts that companies will increase their corporate travel spending by an average of 14% to 15% this year and next.
The frequency of trips per traveler will also increase this year, with one in five corporate travelers planning six to 10 trips (15% up from 2023), and about 10% saying they plan to take more than 10 trips.
But there was one statistic from Deloitte’s study that Crowley found “quite surprising”: 83% of travelers find corporate travel enjoyable.
Crowley believes this has to do with the fact that roughly two-thirds of corporate travelers are extending their business trips for leisure travel. She recalled a corporate travel survey she conducted four years ago, when “bleisure” was the new buzzword.
“There was this feeling of, ‘Is this going to last forever?'” she said. “We really weren’t sure.”
“Four years later, that trend is still continuing,” Crowley added, “so from the hotel side or from the corporate supplier side, this is definitely something to take advantage of.”
The hotel is already Benefit from a recovery in business travelMorning Consult found in June that 44% of adults had booked a hotel stay for work purposes in the past year.
The power of events
Events such as conferences and in-person client visits are driving much of the demand for corporate travel this year, according to Deloitte research.
Deloitte found that roughly 63% of business travelers plan to attend at least one conference in 2024, and half of travel managers rank industry events as a top two growth driver for their company.
According to Knowland and Amadeus, corporate groups (including those traveling for meetings and conventions) Driving the volume of meetings and events Recovery occurred across the U.S., with the Group’s business having fully recovered across 20 U.S. markets.
The Deloitte report also noted that frequent travelers are increasingly traveling to meet with clients in person, with one in five saying they travel at least once a month to serve clients and build relationships.
Crowley believes that this type of face-to-face connection could lead to greater traveler satisfaction.“It’s purposeful and there’s a real return on the investment in travel,” she says, comparing it to pre-pandemic travel, which was dominated by business trips for meetings, now replaced by technology.
Challenges for 2024
But it’s not all smooth sailing for corporate travelers.
Rising prices are impacting companies’ travel plans, with the impact of prices on travel volume being 1.5 times greater than budget cuts, according to Deloitte.
For the first time in several months, the United States Accommodation prices began to fall in June But those costs are still significantly higher than they were before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Price Index.
Corporate travel planners are also working to meet increasingly ambitious sustainability targets for their own companies, so while travelers and travel planners are increasingly taking emissions into account when planning trips, “adoption is inconsistent,” Crowley says.
In many cases, that’s because companies aren’t mandating that sustainability be considered, but rather encouraging employees to make the choice. “I think there’s still work to be done by companies to increase employee adoption rates from a sustainability perspective,” Crowley says.
About 92% Business Travel Experts Say A June 2023 survey by the Global Business Travel Association found that sustainability has become a “priority.”
