GSAIR 2025 | Page 32

Credit: Living Rooms

Purposeful travel

Corporates continue to base travel policies around purposeful travel; travel undertaken when in-person interaction delivers value that cannot be achieved virtually. Alternatively, only travelling when there is

29, 30 clear business justification and measurable value.

Although cost pressures have led some companies to make fewer, but longer trips,( a trend first seen postpandemic), others are doing the reverse; mitigating fewer longer stays by making more shorter stays, which requires operators to be more flexible in their terms and conditions

“ Over the last twelve months our travel spend has fallen, and our serviced apartment spend with it,” says Carol Fergus of Fidelity International.“ People are very mindful of the trips that they’ re making. They are travelling less and staying longer.”

Geopolitics

Travel and mobility managers concede that the confluence of economic and political changes will impact their programmes going forward. They just don’ t know how yet given the scale and scope of these changes.

In reality, uncertainty around tax, border controls, and sustainability mandates is already impacting corporate mobility budgets and operational policies. Shifts in immigration rules, such as US visa backlogs and electronic device inspections are complicating travel planning for assignees. 31

Corporate travel plans are also now more cautious. In some organisations, average length of stay( ALOS) is shortening, thereby bucking the general trend. Even with serviced apartments’ ADR softening as demand shifts.

“ As we came out of the pandemic, ALOS increased, but now it’ s down to 2.7 days for transient travel and has flattened out again. We also do a lot of short stays, which has helped to bring our ALOS down” says Jan Jacobsen.

At Accenture, the biggest challenges have been around changing flight zones 32, 33. That’ s because, as Jan explains,“ its trickier to get people moving across a territory or an area with restricted corridors, but these are short term impacts rather than long term.” Business travel to the Middle East has fallen 8 % year-on-year. 34

European bookings for summer travel to the US fell by 12.8 % during February – March year-on-year, with some airports seeing falls in passenger numbers of between 14.7 % and 23.2 %. 35 Whilst traffic levels subsequently recovered, this illustrates how geopolitics and policydriven concerns can significantly sway long-haul traffic.

Read Tom Otley’ s article Sustainability with Staying Power on pages 62-65.