Skift Travel News Blog

Not only is business travel back with some ferocity, how people travel for business — and indeed leisure — has changed. Amongst the most fascinating changes has been which departments within companies are now traveling and how that compares to pre-pandemic makeup of business travelers.

Based on latest data from the corporate travel agency TripActions across its network of clients, the conventional idea around who travels for business (a majority used to be sales teams) has shifted and is now more distributed, especially among engineering, product, and marketing teams.   

Engineers, who made up just 7% of travelers by job function pre-pandemic, are now at a 13% share. Marketing and Product teams have similarly increased their respective share of travelers.

Meanwhile, Operations, HR, and Finance & Administrative departments, which continued to travel during the peak of the pandemic, have settled back into their pre-pandemic share.

What accounts for this change? The distributed workforce: employees who travel to their own offices or other offsite location to meet with coworkers to build in-person relationships. This bears out the thesis in the essay I wrote last month called “The Great Merging” on the new state of how people live, work, and travel have merged into each other.

Oyo has said it has won 1,250 corporate clients in the past three months across India, as business travel recovers in the country.

The new wins come from small and medium enterprises, traditional business houses and conglomerates, startups and travel management companies. Film production houses have also emerged as a key customer category, it said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The company added that it had engaged with 2,800 offline travel agents since January 2021.

Top cities include Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune and Delhi.
Its Business Accelerator division has serviced over 6,600 corporate clients since January 2021, it added.

“The appetite for business travel has returned strongly since the frequent change in travel restrictions has ebbed, making travel planning for business trips more certain and predictable. For a lot of our corporate customers, conducting business over virtual meetings was a stop gap and sub-optimal solution,” said Ankit Gupta, CEO of OYO, India.

Compared to leisure bookers, the startup’s business customers receive curated stay options, personalised customer support and integration with their accounting system.

The extra boost comes as Oyo delays its IPO — potentially until 2023. Earlier this month Oyo acquired Dubrovnik, Croatia-headquartered Direct Booker, which has 3,200 homes.

A smooth, steady start for American Express Global Business Travel during its stock market debut.

The world’s largest corporate travel agency listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, under the ticket symbol GBTG, following a business combination deal with Apollo Strategic Growth Capital. The parties initially announced the combination on December 3, 2021.

Shares opened at $7.55 on its first day as a public company. They closed higher at $8.37 after its first day trading on Tuesday.

“We have a significant growth opportunity ahead of us,” said CEO Paul Abbott in a LinkedIn post Tuesday. “As a public company, we have the flexibility to realise Amex GBT’s full potential.”

It was only on May 27, the Friday before the Memorial weekend, that Amex GBT announced it would begin trading on Tuesday. That followed Apollo Strategic Growth Capital shareholders voting to approve its combination with Amex GBT days earlier, on May 25.

As part of its go-public merger, Amex GBT received $335 million from a PIPE, or private investment in public equity, deal with new investors including Zoom, Sabre and private equity group Ares Management.

They join existing backers American Express, Expedia and Certares. Only 15 percent of the company’s stock is expected to be owned by public shareholders.

Investors will be betting on the recovery of corporate travel, which despite rising air fares seems to be on track to exceed spending last seen in 2019 by the end of the year. In April, Amex GBT execs sought to assure investors that the pandemic was just a blip for corporate travel.

They may have just pulled it off.

“For far too long the darlings of travel, like Booking.com and Expedia, have been the focus. With Amex GBT using their SPAC to go public, it now brings corporate travel as a sector and a place to work to the forefront of people’s minds,” said Gavin Smith, director of Element Travel Technology. “It might even help bring those who left, back to the sector. Corporate travel now sits where it should always have done, side by side with leisure.”

However, one investor who wished to remain anonymous told Skift: “We ended up deciding to not participate since the valuation relative to some of the other things we are seeing in the market wasn’t as compelling. It’s a good business with nice tailwinds, it’s just there are more interesting things to be invested in right now.”

Corporate travel agency TripActions is looking to secure more funds, according to Bloomberg.

It said the startup was looking towards a $9 billion valuation.

The startup is reportedly in talks for a new round of funding at a higher valuation because investors are more keen on private technology companies due to the declining value of publicly-traded shares.

There’s also interest because travel is rebounding at a faster than expected rate.

Bloomberg said a spokesperson for TripActions declined to comment.

TripActions raised $275 million in October from investors including Greenoaks Capital Management, Base Partners and entrepreneur Elad Gil, giving it a $7.25 billion valuation.

The world’s biggest corporate travel agency has seen record growth in its customers spending.

In line with (most) other travel industry earnings results, American Express Global Business Travel has seen a significant bounce back over the past few months.

The agency reported a 454 percent increase in total transaction value for this year’s, compared to the same quarter in 2021.

Posting its first-quarter results on Tuesday, it reported transactions of $4.15 billion for the three months ended March 31, compared with $749 million in the prior year’s quarter.

Revenue for the quarter increased 179 percent to $350 million, but it made a net loss of $91 million, a slight improvement on the $114 million loss for the same period in 2021.

As a result of the improved transaction recovery, Amex GBT raised its full-year 2022 revenue guidance by $250 million to $1.75 billion.

Transaction recovery in the last three weeks of April 20224 reached 72 percent of 2019 pro forma, increased 11 points versus the last week of March 2022, the company said.

“We believe we have reached a pivotal moment in the business travel recovery,” said CEO Paul Abbott.

The agency plans to go public later this year by merging with an Apollo Management-backed blank check company.