The Advantage Travel Partnership said business travel booking volumes in 2023 were 92% of those seen in 2019 as the sector reached a “new normal”.
The average transaction value for 2023 was £429 – 5.7% higher than in 2022 and 44.8% higher than in 2019.
Meanwhile, the average trip duration during 2023 was 6.95 days, a rise of 51% when compared to 2019’s 4.6 days.
The consortium also reported that business travellers are turning left more, as premium class air travel rise in line with concern about the health and wellbeing of employees.
The figures and trends come from the sixth edition of Advantage’s Global Business Travel Review, produced with travel technology and data analyst specialist company Travelogix.
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Guy Snelgar, global business travel director of the Advantage Travel Partnership, said: “We can finally say goodbye to the pre-Covid comparisons of 2019 and truly look to understand what the ‘new normal’ for business travel now is.
“The chaos of travel throughout the pandemic and its lingering effects has undoubtedly had a seismic effect on the business travel industry and we are seeing that reflected in the data, with longer trips being booked and wellbeing now at the forefront of a business traveller’s duty of care.
“Despite current geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty, we are seeing a buoyant business travel market and are expecting to see high demand from the corporate travel industry throughout 2024. As we look ahead, there is plenty to be optimistic about.”
Among the trends identified for 2024 were opportunities for the increased use of blockchain technology in the business travel industry.
Bernardo Botella, global sales director at Air Europa, commented in the report on technologies such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
“The world of cryptocurrencies and what supports it (blockchain technology) is currently focused on achieving improvements in the user experience,” he said.
“Cryptocurrencies, which will need more time to become stable and evolve as common means of payment, could bring significant benefits to the traveller, such as the ability to bypass currency exchange, as well as the additional layer of security they represent.
“In the same direction, blockchain technology, which is behind the NFT format tickets we launched last year, brings greater reliability and, above all, great options to add layers of service to ticketing, as well as customer autonomy.
“As for artificial intelligence, this is a game-changer that we were already living with in terms of advanced data analysis.”
Other trends for 2024 included more ‘blended travel’ as employees combine business and leisure trips, and more domestic bookings as hybrid and homeworking mean staff increasingly travel to their business for meetings, events and conferences.
Meanwhile, sustainability remains a key consideration, with more corporations expected to have employees travelling by train instead of plane on shorter journeys.
Travelogix forecasts that 2024 will outperform 2023 by at least 15.5% and 2019 by at least 6.2%.
The data for the report was sourced by Travelogix from Advantage members and other travel management companies.