The latest figures from the hotel data tracker, STR, have shown that international business travel might take some time to recover due to the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the business and travel sector.
Consequently, it has been emphasized that business travel will be at risk if the leisure travel market continues to remain closed for internationals. This means that business travel guests might not be able to travel for international business purposes until there is some kind of certainty regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
In spite of the fact that vaccinated travelers have been able to travel within the European Union, it is still very unclear when international travel will go back to the pre-pandemic state, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
According to Skift, the managing director of STR, Robin Rossmann has said that even though it might sound conservative, international business travel might not recover until 2024.
“There’s no doubt people want to travel, but the question is will their businesses let them travel,” Rossmann added.
Business Travel Show Europe has also shown in its latest survey that due to the effect that the Coronavirus pandemic has had on the business sector, every tenth European travel buyer expects that the travel spending of their company will increase during the following year, compared to the figures registered in 2019.
In line with the survey, which consisted of 313 participants, most companies plan to make budget reductions. Of the participants, 39 percent claimed that they are currently dealing with budget cuts, which go up to 50 percent. Another 25 percent of them said that they are planning to make budget cuts really soon.
“One-quarter of buyers revealed they are feeling under pressure to cut costs,” the Executive Vice President of BTN group, Louis Magliaro.
Despite the fact that everyone expected the business travel spending to be highly affected by the COVID-19, Magliaro said that it is very comforting to know that of all the participants, 13 percent of them believe that their budget will increase or stay the same during 2022.
In addition, another 25 percent of the buyers believe that the business travel of their company will be over 80 percent in the next two years compared to 2019.
Apart from that, Eurostat has reported that administrative and support services, which are usually brought by businesses, are currently at a level of 81.6 percent compared to 2019. Although the figures represent an increase compared to the third quarter of 2020, the increase is still too weak to recover the losses of the first and the second quarter of 2020.
