The Corporate Travel Conundrum

Business travel was once a badge of honour. As corporate soldiers, we once used to march around at airport lounges, dressed in our navy and grey suits, holding on to our leather carry-on bags, with a copy of The Financial Times tucked under our arms.

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Accumulating reward miles was our favourite game—one in which we would compare miles with other business travellers as if more points denoted that we worked harder than the rest. Red-eyed and constantly on the move somehow justified our existence.

However, a shift has happened in how we look at business travel. It is no surprise that Covid-19 has upended the way we work. It is a given that hybrid work is here to stay. What is uncertain, though, is how the future of business travel will evolve, given several new trends that have surfaced since the pandemic. Undoubtedly, post-pandemic, business travel returned more intensely than most analysts had predicted. However, whether it will reach the same level and intensity as the pre-pandemic years is uncertain.

One primary driver for this expected shift is companies reaping cost savings during 2020–22 because of less travel and realising that work can happen remotely. Take, for example, how teams got structured during the pandemic years. Remote working allowed managers to hire talent away from their usual office space. When structuring a new function, I built a distributed team; its members were recruited from and placed in Modena, Paris, Cairo and Sweden.