The world will be quite different post-pandemic. Business travel is evolving rapidly to adapt to this change. Even though companies are prioritizing essential travel at the moment, here are the emerging trends that are here to stay –
Bunched trips
Does traveling for just a one-off sales meeting make sense now? Debatable. Last week, Kulin, co-founder of Onsurity, a corporate group insurance company, shared how he bunched 5 meetings into a 4-day trip. He quoted — “Instead of traveling 5 times for 5 individual meetings every month, why not stay for a week and travel just once. I closed 3 of 5 deals this way.”
Duty of Care
Safety will continue to be one of the top priorities. Real-time trip tracking, showing verified properties, monitoring advisory across sites, and duty-of-care solutions are here to stay. We have discussed the duty of care in detail here
Local travel with personal vehicle
Business travelers are favoring the use of personal vehicles in a radius of 200 miles. Many companies have restructured their expense and reimbursement policies to allow for this change. We added this as a new travel mode on Zoliday along with flights and hotels. Many companies in the traditional sectors (Retail, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals) are reacting positively to this.
Insurance is a must
With lots of innovation in fintech, insurance companies are coming up with new plans for business travelers. New ways of underwriting are evolving that take government advisories, travel duration into account.
Tightening of policies
How does the manager decide if the trip is essential or not? Should we bunch multiple meetings into one-trip ? One way to do it is to ask the employees to add the purpose of the trip before traveling. Companies are looking to set different approval work
Budget alerts
The CFO and the finance teams will start monitoring budget expenses in real-time. Monthly travel budgets are now set at a department and team level. In fact, few companies are setting it for trip purposes as well. Gone are the days when they came to know about budget excesses three months down the line. They would get alerted on nearing the set team or event budget.
Flexible workplaces
The future of the workplace is hybrid — that of course includes office and homes. But at the same time, employees are getting fatigued from WFH. Hotels can now serve as meeting rooms and working desks. The biggest challenge for wider adoption is reliable Wi-Fi connection and security (VPN access).
Do you see any other new trends emerging? Write in the comment below or contact us here
