Businesses are spending more on travel this year, according to the 2024 Deloitte Corporate Travel Report.
But the shape of that corporate travel is changing. Increased spending is driven in large part by travel to events and in-person client visits, and travelers continue to tack on extra nights for leisure — a trend that shows no signs of abating.
“The purpose of corporate travel has changed since 2019,” said Eileen Crowley, who leads Deloitte’s U.S. Audit and Assurance Transportation, Hospitality and Services practice. Hotel Dive sat down with Crowley to unpack those changes, how corporate travelers feel about them and the trends that will impact the sector in 2024 and beyond.
Post-pandemic recovery
Deloitte projects that companies will increase their corporate travel spending on average between 14% and 15% this year and next.
Per traveler, trip frequency will also increase this year, with one in five corporate travelers expecting to take six to 10 trips (up 15% from 2023). Some 10% say they plan on taking more than 10 trips.
But there’s one stat from Deloitte’s findings that Crowley found “very surprising”: 83% of travelers find corporate travel to be enjoyable.
Crowley believes that has to do with the fact that roughly two-thirds of corporate travelers are extending their business trips for leisure. She recalled the corporate travel study she did four years ago, when “bleisure” was a hot new term.
“There was that ‘is that going to stay?’ mentality,” she said. “We weren't really sure.”
“Here we are four years later, and that aspect is sticking,” Crowley added. “So that's certainly something from a hotel perspective, or for corporate suppliers, to take advantage of.”
Hotels are already benefiting from business travel’s rebound, according to Morning Consult, which found in June that 44% of adults have booked a hotel stay for work in the past year.
The power of events
Events such as conferences and in-person client visits are driving much of the corporate travel demand this year, Deloitte found.
Some 63% of business travelers expect to attend at least one conference in 2024, according to Deloitte, which also found that half of travel managers rank industry events among their top two growth drivers.
Per Knowland and Amadeus, corporate groups — including those traveling for conferences or conventions — are driving meetings and events volume across the U.S., and group business has fully recovered in 20 U.S. markets.
Deloitte’s report also noted that frequent travelers are hitting the road more often for in-person client visits. One in five say they have traveled once per month or more for client work or relationship building.
Crowley believes those in-person connections could be driving traveler satisfaction. “There's a purpose, a real return on the travel investment,” she said, as compared to pre-pandemic travel, which included more travel for meetings that have since been replaced by technology.
2024 challenges
It’s not all rosy, however, for corporate travelers.
High prices are impacting businesses’ travel plans, according to Deloitte, which found that pricing’s impact on travel volume is 1.5 times more significant than budget cuts.
For the first time in many months, U.S. lodging costs began to ease in June – but those costs are still significantly higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Price Index.
Corporate travel planners are also working to meet their companies’ increasingly ambitious sustainability goals. As such, travelers and travel planners are increasingly factoring in emissions when trip planning — but “there's not consistency in adoption,” according to Crowley.
Often, that’s because companies aren’t mandating sustainability considerations, but rather encouraging employees to opt in. “I think there's still work to do for companies to try and get a higher adoption rate by their employees from a sustainability perspective,” Crowley said.
Some 92% of business travel professionals say sustainability is a “priority,” according to a June 2023 survey by the Global Business Travel Association.
