PÁDRAIC GILLIGAN , CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER , SITE , SAYS WE SHOULD KEEP BUSINESS EVENTS AWAY FROM BUSINESS TRAVEL

ccording to recent reports in the London Financial Times ( August 2023 ), business travel ( as opposed to business events ) has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic , levels . The reasons for this are called out in a nicely provocative headline ‘ Business class revival stalls as premium flights cost more and carbon curbs bite ’.

Average premium class airfare has risen from US $ 3,666 in 2019 to US $ 4,395 , prompting one airline boss to say that the industry was now operating “ in a world where business travel may not be coming back ” ( Robin Hayes , chief executive at JetBlue ).

Multinational corporations – but not SMEs – according to AmEx , have been slow to bring back business travel , some cutting back on travel to reduce carbon emissions . But this , remember , is

business travel . The Covid years proved to corporations that some business meetings could be just as effective on-line as in-person . They also demonstrated , however , that some business meetings could NOT be effective unless they were in-person .

JetBlue ’ s Robin Hayes is probably over-stating it , but I think it is fair to say that business travel is unlikely to reach the high-water mark of 2019 and that , in the overall scheme of things , gives us a more sustainable model overall , both in terms of its enduring and its environmental characteristics .

So , business travel is below 2019 levels still but its sub-set , business events , is definitely not . When SITE surveyed incentive travel professionals during the Covid years , many stated it would be 2025 or 2026 before incentives would recover to 2019 levels . But now we know that is not what happened at all .

In truth , incentives were already exceeding 2019 levels in 2022 ( mainly due to delayed execution of 2020 and

Above : Pádraic Gilligan

“ Business travel is below 2019 levels still but its sub-set , business events , is definitely not ”

2021 programmes ) but the upward trend has been maintained for 2023 and , according to early signs from this year ’ s Incentive Travel Index ( 2023 ), this is set to last into the future . Good news indeed .

It ’ s good news for our industry at large but there ’ s an important underlying principle here that we need to be aware of , and to highlight at every available opportunity . That principle concerns how the corporate world understands , classifies and categorises incentive travel and corporate meetings .

For many companies , corporate meetings , events , incentive travel programmes and so on are classified as travel and , therefore , will suffer the same vicissitudes that travel will endure due to changing economic , and increasingly , attitudinal factors .

Corporate meetings and incentive travel programmes cannot , and should not , be reduced to mere ‘ travel ’ line items in the overall budget of a corporation . Their nature , purpose and direction are way more nuanced than such a reductive classification .

Corporate meetings , whether focused on updating , alignment or sales kick-offs are crucial on so many levels : overall staff and stakeholder engagement , alignment with corporate culture and values , fostering of connections .

Likewise , incentive travel programmes are not line items in corporate travel budget but strategic initiatives that drive sales , ensure staff retention , foster esprit de corps and model corporate culture .

The good news is that corporations appear to be recognising this and , while business travel stagnates , business events prevail .

Long may it be so !