The corporate travel industry is going through a period of major change. Not only are new technologies actively penetrating the market, but the very approach to organizing trips is changing. In today’s material we will look at the main trends of 2020.
Changing the portrait of a business traveler
One of the main trends that affects the entire industry and provokes many other changes. The employees who go on business trips today are completely different from those who did 15 or 20 years ago. Today, the leading role in the global labor market is played by the so-called millennials. These are people born in the late eighties and mid-nineties of the last century. They grew up during the era of rapid development of the Internet, which shaped their attitude to life, work and travel.
If previously an employee was sent on a business trip and he just went without any questions, then millennials want to have more opportunities to influence the parameters of the trip. Therefore, more and more often, companies provide them with the opportunity to independently choose the type of transfer and place of residence in a new city – of course, within the framework of the restrictions prescribed in the travel policy.
Growing popularity of bleisure travel
The second trend follows from the first. Under the influence of millennials, the bleisure trend was born and is actively developing. This is a compound term from the English words business and leisure. The essence of the phenomenon is to combine both a business trip and a mini-vacation within one trip. This usually looks like the company allowing the employee to spend a few more days in the city after completing a work assignment.
Millennials love to travel, and research suggests they value travel more than their parents. For young professionals, the opportunity to travel and explore new places can be one of the main reasons to choose a particular company. Thus, bleisure travel also becomes a tool for attracting talented employees.
The emergence of b2b versions of booking services
Another important direction of development is that more and more B2B versions of booking services are appearing. For a long time, the business travel industry lagged behind the b2c segment in terms of digitalization: vacations can be booked entirely online for many years, and until recently, business trips were organized exclusively offline.
Now more and more business travel automation tools are appearing. One of them is One Two Trip For Business. In our system you can book air and railway tickets, hotels, and at the same time there are cost control functions that are important for business and the ability to use payment options for legal entities.
The main directions of business trips are changing
A trend that is clearly evident in our country. The difficult economic situation in many industries and the unstable exchange rate of the national currency are forcing businesses to try to develop, including abroad. Therefore, the number of foreign business trips is growing, and companies are spending more and more money on them – in 2019, costs increased by 43%.
Conclusion
The business travel market is actively developing. There are objective reasons for this: demographic, economic, and the fact that the market lags behind the b2c sphere also plays a role.
For a long time the industry changed slowly, but now the speed of change is extremely high. This benefits everyone – the emergence of new technologies and flexible approaches to organizing trips allows company employees to go on a business trip as conveniently as on vacation. In turn, companies save on business travel and can be more flexible in solving their business problems.
