The End of Business Travel – Unpack Now
by Robert McGarvey
It is time to face up to reality. After months of optimistic forecasts about the return to “normal” in business travel – Panglossian utterances proliferated from the mouths of airline CEOs and their counterparts in the hotel industry – it is increasingly obvious that it ain’t happening. not this year, not next, nowhere in the future we can realistically envision.
Money talks.
A recent Bloomberg survey of 45 large businesses found that 84% plan to spend less on business travel in the post Covid era. Most expected budgets to drop 20 to 40% and to stay dropped.
Why? The c-suite has discovered that we do not need to travel to keep the bottomline climbing. Profits, in most sectors, have been rosy in this era of Zoom calls.
Meantime, a new survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that even business travelers are souring on the idea of going on the road: “About 60% of business traveler respondents indicated they likely would postpone their travel plans until a later date. About 67% noted they are likely to take fewer trips, while 68% said they are likely to take shorter and 66% said they are likely will travel only places they can drive to.”
Not all travel will be nixed, not by the c-suite and not by business travelers. I expect that the travel budgets for sales teams will be restored as soon as we pass through the Delta variant resurgence of Covid-19. I imagine c-suiters and other corporate high flyers will continue to circle the globe too.
What will be cut are many inhouse get togethers and very probably quite a few conferences too.
Ditto trips to offsite trainings. You can learn better email hygiene just as well at your desk watching a Zoom presentation as you would traveling to an offsite meeting at a Virginia hotel.
Travel without a tangible bottomline payoff just is going to be cancelled. But that’s not the only factor.
There are many reasons not to travel and saving money is just one. There also is the sustainability issue and, by any measure, business travel is increasingly seen for what it is – a disaster in terms of carbon and, in 2021, with fires and floods and hurricanes, it is ever harder to deny that climate change is triggering mayhem across the planet. Any organization that wants to be on the right side of sustainability has to be trimming its travel.
Then there are the health impacts of frequent business travel. A 2018 Harvard Business Review article told the sad story: “we found a strong correlation between the frequency of business travel and a wide range of physical and behavioral health risks. Compared to those who spent one to six nights a month away from home for business travel, those who spent 14 or more nights away from home per month had significantly higher body mass index scores and were significantly more likely to report the following: poor self-rated health; clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence; no physical activity or exercise; smoking; and trouble sleeping. The odds of being obese were 92% higher for those who traveled 21 or more nights per month compared to those who traveled only one to six nights per month, and this ultra-traveling group also had higher diastolic blood pressure and lower high density lipoprotein (the good cholesterol).”
Frequent business travel may also dull our performance on the job. “Frequent business travelers experience 20 percent less productivity due to jet lag. Business travelers often have less time to recover from journey related stress, which leads to ‘brain fog.'”
The dirty secret is that lots of frequent business travelers plain dislike the grind. The pretense is that it is a life of glamor and excitement but is it really? Maybe it was in 1975. But today? With fist fights over masks, ridiculous arguments about vaccines, hotels without cleaning crews, a shortage of Uber drivers, and the list can go on. Travel just is not much fun anymore and it won’t be anytime soon.
And yet…I remain on track to take a trip to Spain later this year. I look forward to it. I want to go. And it will be fun.
The right trip is a joy. But too much business travel is done just because it gets entered into a calendar.
Me, I am actively erasing future trips.
For instance: although I had been a frequent traveler to conferences and conventions, I have not been to one in a couple years and have no present plans to go. What I get out of them can largely be gotten via Zoom.
I will use the same analytics on all travel possibilities. Whatever travel presents itself to me I will ask, is it necessary? Will it get better results in person?
If the answers aren’t resounding yesses, I will be a no go.
A lot of business travelers feel likewise. Half? I don’t know the percentage but I do believe it is a significant minority who will not only not protest company slashing of travel budgets they will, probably quietly, cheer it.
When a trip is right – and necessary – go. Otherwise I am staying home.,