A survey from Sabre released last month offers an optimistic outlook for corporate travel, naming it "the new office culture". It says that smaller companies are returning to corporate travel faster than large corporations, which might need longer lead times to adapt their travel policies and safety guidance, but that the desire for business travel is strong.
Deloitte’s research on global business travel, published in April, says that concerns about restrictions, employee willingness to travel, and in-person events have reduced significantly.
Tay Ling, vice president at Pico Japan, says there is still a great deal of pent-up demand among company employees to get out and enjoy a change of scenery, albeit with a drop in numbers.
“It may be that many business travellers see their trips as ‘bleisure’ excursions, no matter what the destination,” he says. “Overall, companies are generally happy to travel and meet, but audience sizes have seen a huge reduction. They’re generally at around 100-200 people per meeting, instead of the 1,000 there might have been in the past.”
The agency is finding that corporate travel depends very much on the country and client. “Recently, our Taiwan office was working on a summit event for an electronics brand,” explains Tay Ling. “This client very much wanted that face-to-face meeting experience; so much so that when Taiwan’s quarantine couldn’t be lifted, they shifted the event to South Korea.”
Tay Ling
Vice President, Pico Japan
