A new survey has revealed that about two-thirds of European-based travel buyers expect the travel business of their organization to be higher in 2023 than last year and have expressed their concern about rising costs.
According to data provided in the survey carried out by events technology specialist Cvent, 80 per cent of around 600 European travel buyers from major markets such as France, Germany, and the UK, said that they felt positive about the business travel activity of their organization.
As BTN Europe explains, of these, 64 per cent said that there would be more business travel throughout this year, and 19 per cent said that the increase in travel would be very significant.
However, despite expecting travel activity to increase, travel buyers expressed their concern about the rising costs of all types of travel products, with around 30 per cent of them anticipating the ground transport cost to increase the most.
According to the survey, minimizing the cost of travel is a priority for around 65 per cent of the buyers, with them saying that this is their top concern.
Moreover, as BTN Europe reveals, in order to fight the rising costs, travel buyers have said that they are using several tactics, with one of the most popular being to combine their business-related travel with other existing events that employees will attend.
In addition to the above-mentioned, it has been noted that 37 per cent of buyers are reducing the number of their colleagues traveling. Furthermore, 22 per cent of buyers said that these kinds of trips are now tending to have a longer duration period.
Moreover, 70 per cent of buyers based in Europe said that they are also expecting a higher average budget per trip this year, saying that the increase in costs calls for an increase in the budget within their organizations.
Commenting on the matter, the vice president of international sales at Cvent, Graham Pope, said that corporate travel managers are trying to work with hotels so that travel buyers do not have to deal with high costs.
“After the strong return of leisure and MICE travel, corporate travel managers are eager to get their teams back on the road but are keen to work with hotels that understand their needs and can be flexible given budget constraints,” the statement of Pope reads.
Among the priorities among travel buyers are also locations where they will be staying as well as sustainability.
