A global survey of Corporate Travel Management (CTM) customers has revealed that 78 per cent of corporate travel customers believe that travel restrictions imposed in response to COVID-19 have had a negative impact on business growth, supporting the key role travel will play in economic recovery.
90 per cent of Australian and New Zealand respondents In Australia and New Zealand have experienced a negative impact on business growth as a result of the inability to travel.
In all of CTM’s operating regions, customers were experiencing a downward trend in both financial performance (68 per cent of respondents globally) and the ability to support and engage with customers and employees (65 per cent of respondents globally).
The survey also found that travel restrictions have led to project delays and have impacted new business development, relationship building and training for customers and employees.
“These trends all need to be reversed for business to recover, and our customers are telling us they are keen to return to business travel as long as they are confident their people are safe,” said CTM managing director, Jamie Pherous.
Just 14 per cent of CTM’s corporate customers globally believe that changes to their company’s travel policies made in relation to COVID-19 would be permanent, and the most common permanent changes included implementing additional travel approval measures and specific measures for pandemics.
“People want to get back out there, it’s part of the desire to return to a sense of normality and travelling to spend time with customers and employees is an important part of that,” Pherous said. “It’s our role to provide customers with the information they need to get back on the road safely and cost effectively moving forward.”
CTM customers said government travel advice about border controls, quarantine measures and destination health advice, and traveller tracking and emergency communication tools would be key to enabling a safe and effective return to business travel.
“The data we are integrating into our point of sale tools provides travel bookers with crucial airline information relating to hygiene and cleanliness, health screening, passenger and crew wellbeing and flexible conditions for the services they are booking, at the time of booking, to ensure travellers feel confident that they are safe to travel.”
