Dive Brief:
- Business travel is still recovering from its pandemic slump, but as it rebounds, its demographics are shifting, according to Morning Consult’s “Travel Is Back in Business” report, released Monday.
- The report, authored by travel and hospitality analyst Lindsey Roeschke, surveyed more than 2,200 U.S. adults in April. It found that younger travelers are driving business travel growth, as Gen Z accounts for a larger percentage of business travelers than ever before.
- Hotels are the winners of business travel’s rebound, with 44% of adults surveyed by Morning Consult saying they’ve booked a hotel stay for work in the past year, and one in 10 saying they’ve done so five or more times.
Dive Insight:
Though business travel in the U.S. hasn’t fully recovered, it is “on its way,” according to the report — if slowly. Morning Consult expects the sector will reach its pre-pandemic volume levels in 2025.
And while hotels are drawing the majority of these business travelers, the rise in vacation rentals may impact chain hotels, the report warns. Some 44% of people with plans to travel for work said they’d be staying in a chain hotel, down 15 points from January 2022, according to Morning Consult.
“While business travelers still favor chain hotels as a primary means of accommodation, the share who said they’d be staying at one for travel in the coming months has trended down in the past two years,” according to the report. The trend is drawn by continued “bleisure” trips, demographics shifting toward Gen Z and millennial business travelers and loosening corporate rules around short-term rentals, Morning Consult found.
Gen Z is a “rising force” in travel, Roeschke told Hotel Dive last month.
Hotel brands should “cast a wide net” when defining business travelers, according to the report, which noted that the travelers aren’t always high spenders. In fact, those surveyed by Morning Consult were more likely to have taken a road trip for work than flown.
The U.S. is the largest domestic travel market in the world, with some 68% of trips that start here heading to destinations within the country, McKinsey & Company associate partner Jasperina de Vries told Hotel Dive last month.
Hilton is already widening its net, with the Hilton for Business program courting small- and medium-sized businesses specifically.
Morning Consult found that the most popular reason to travel for business is conferences and seminars, highlighting the resurgence of live events.
According to Knowland and Amadeus, group business has fully recovered in 20 U.S. markets, and corporate groups — including those traveling for conferences or conventions — are driving meetings and events volume.
