For the lucrative business travel industry,
A partner account executive at a
Contreras manages his North American accounts from
“Maybe it's just the acceptance of the new normal. I have all of the resources necessary to be on the calls, all of the communicative devices to make sure I can do my job," he said. “There's an element of of face-to-face that's necessary, but I would be OK without it.”
That trend could spell big trouble for hotels, airlines, convention centers and other industries that rely so heavily on business travelers like Contreras.
Work travel represented 21% of the
“I do think corporate travel is going to come back faster than people suspect. I just don’t know if it will be come back to the full volume,” Bastian told The Associated Press. Right now,
“We have managed to deliver projects and negotiate deals very successfully, though remotely,” MBC spokesman
Amazon, which told it employees to stop traveling in March, says it has saved nearly
At
“I think that’s going to continue for a long time. I’m very confident it will recover and pass 2019 levels, I just don’t know when,” Kelly told the AP.
Companies have also reined in travel because times are lean, he said.
Those who want to travel may also be limited by travel restrictions, Belobaba added. Last month, Polestar CEO
Polestar, an electric car brand jointly owned by Sweden’s Volvo and China’s Geely, has always tried to limit travel for environmental reasons. But the 14-day quarantine has restricted travel even further, said
The cutback in travel has been a boon for teleconferencing services. Zoom said it had 370,200 customer businesses with at least 10 employees at the end of July, more than triple the number it had at the end of April.
But for some workers, teleconferencing can't replace being there in person.
Lindland misses the downtime air travel gave her, and she's confident she can return to the skies safely. She wears a mask, and even before the pandemic she always carried Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer.
“I’ve been wiping down my tray tables since 1985,” she said with a laugh.
Lockdowns have taught employees how to adapt to different work environments, he says, so hotels, airlines and even cruise ships should beef up their connectivity and cater to business travelers.
Late last month, Marriott introduced flexible options aimed at business travelers, including one-day stays with an evening check-out.
Clarke also expects some companies will flip their travel. Instead of letting a few executives travel a lot, he said, companies could let most employees work from home and fly them all back to their headquarters once a year.
Some businesses are already changing the way their work is done.
When travel came to a halt in March, the company invested in proprietary software and sent iPads and other equipment to clients so it could coach them through their own video shoots, President Cynthia Kay said.
As a result, the company’s sales are down only 15-20% even though its travel spending has plunged 75%.
Still, Kay and her staff were eager to get back on the road once they felt they could do that safely. Kay began traveling again last month.
“For some people, this is the way they will work going forward,” Kay said. “But you can’t account for the spark that happens when you get people in the same room.”
AP Business Writers
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