Economic recovery or not, corporate travelers might not return to business class
Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 by Kat Schneider Fotheringham in Blog, Business Travel, Uncategorized, corporate housing, executive accommodations, international business travel
Wondering when your company might begin booking your seats in business class again?
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), rather than find a way to budget for those business-class seats, employers may instead be seeking permanent reductions to their travel budgets, which means fewer employees sitting in the front of the plane on their next business trip.
To illustrate this change even further, premium bookings advanced only 1.7 percent in December over 2008 figures, while economy-class traffic rose 5 percent, suggesting business travelers are staying in coach–at least for the time being.
Not too suprisingly, it is the global economy that will keep the modest growth going, now and into the future. In fact, December’s increase was advanced by a 15 percent boost in premium bookings within Asia, and also by long-haul trips tied to emerging economies.
But let’s not get too blue about all of this yet–spending on corporate travel does tend to follow behind economic growth, as once budget cuts have been implemented they tend to remain in place for several years. Airline have been trying to compensate for these changes, including building a better economy class section, complete with more comfortable and larger seats, better food and entertainment. But in the end, these upgrades to economy class may make it unnecessary for travelers–business and leisure–to hurry back to business and first class.
In the end, the recovery is happening and corporate budgets are beginning to inch back up. But the way business does business seems to have made a permanent shift. And who knows? Maybe spending less money on air and ground travel might leave us a bit more to play with when booking corporate housing accommodations.
