New Report: The State of Business Travel 2020

The multi-trillion dollar business travel sector is in the middle of a fundamental transformation. The role that business travel plays for employees and companies is more important than ever before. But many of the longstanding assumptions that once informed the spending and policy decisions of industry decision-makers are falling by the wayside. In place of these assumptions are new rules: Technology is reshaping how business travelers plan and book their trips, employee habits and expectations are evolving, and new industry competitors are bringing fresh ideas and options to corporate travel buyers.

Sitting at the center of this whirlwind of changes are corporate travel managers, a constituency that holds one of the sector’s toughest jobs. One one hand, they must use business travel to satisfy the needs of the executive suite, helping to control costs, boost the company’s profits, and keep employees safe. On the other, they must build travel policies that help to put employees at ease, providing convenient, easy-to-use tools that help them complete their trips with minimal hassle.

What do today’s business travelers really want, and how does that align with the expectations and priorities of executives? In addition, what can the larger trends in the business travel sector tell us about the spending decisions and business travel tools that travel managers and policy makers should prioritize for their organization in the year to come?

To help better understand these questions, Skift partnered with TripActions on a research study analyzing the attitudes and opinions of corporate travel managers and business travelers. The results of that study form the basis of this report, which investigates the attitudes and opinions of these key industry stakeholders as they relate to emerging industry trends and key pain points in the business travel experience.

In this report

• Analysis of emerging business travel industry trends related to online distribution, ancillaries, the sharing economy and more
  
• A comparison of the attitudes and habits of business travelers with the attitudes of corporate travel managers on travel activities like booking, handling problems, expensing, and more
  
• A look at the business travel tools and companies most preferred by industry stakeholders
  
• An investigation of business travelers’ preferred booking methods and communication channels
  
• Insight into attitudes towards loyalty programs and business travel incentives
  
• An examination of emerging traveler habits related to bleisure travel and how employees purchase trip add-ons (also known as ancillaries)