Business travel may never fully recover, as companies like McKinsey make permanent cuts to trips.
Workers are steadily returning to the office, and staying there. Corporate travel spending is a third of what it was before the pandemic, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Some signs suggest that business travel will never return to prepandemic levels.
McKinsey is the latest company to confirm a permanent cut in business travel, the DealBook newsletter reports. The global consulting firm recently decided to reduce its travel by 25 percent from its prepandemic level, according to a company representative. Right now, its workers are not traveling as much as they did before, but as conditions return to normal, the firm has told employees, including senior management consultants and firm leaders, to spend less time on the road.
McKinsey says that less travel will foster collaboration and team building, especially as employees return to the office. Before the pandemic, McKinsey had the ninth-biggest travel budget in corporate America, spending an estimated $265 million on U.S.-booked airfares in 2019, according to Business Travel News.
Climate pledges are another factor that could permanently reduce corporate travel, according to a report released Tuesday by IdeaWorks, a corporate travel consulting firm. The report said because corporate travel represented a large portion of professional service firms’ carbon footprints, many will not be able to meet their climate goals without a significant reduction in travel.
Jay Sorensen, the president of IdeaWorks, said that some business travel is “very durable,” but that there are “a whole lot” of other trips that were once routine but may no longer be taken. “Airlines are planning for a future in which there are fewer business travelers,” he said.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/29/business/economy-news-inflation-ukraine