Trying to deliver your bottom line? Double your business travel now

SO HERE we are. Right after a globally crippling pandemic with travel restrictions that lasted longer in South-east Asia than in other regions, we run straight into a global recession. Many parts of the world are also seeing inflation approaching 10 per cent and ultra-tough investing environments for both established players and start-ups. As a direct result of these intense operating pressures, companies are cutting costs and business travel is often the first to go.

Slashing travel budgets is often the path of least resistance and gives an immediate positive impact on a company’s bottom line – a big win for CFOs. Understandably so. Against other items on an expense report, like employee benefits and marketing expenses, reducing business travel requires little sensitivity with limited impact on people.

But here’s a notion to contend with: reducing overall business travel is the easy but wrong approach if you want to maximise your business results. For 2022, regional companies should be “doubling” travel, not cutting travel budgets.

If you just looked up the byline of this article (I lead a travel company), you may be tempted to instantly dismiss this proposition. But keep with me. Most senior executives have underinvested in important business relationships these past two years. So we should call a travel cut what it really is, another challenge to those relationships that frankly don’t need to be tested further.

Increasing travel to assure those relationships is likely to be a top-team priority when considering the potential downside impact of not investing in them. Effective investment in travel is likely to help you avoid the downward spiral of repeated cost-cutting cycles to achieve future goals.

Travelling for business is really about long-term value

In a time when travel was impossible and meet-ups were deemed unsafe, technology was the next best way to keep us connected globally. Two years later, we’ve discovered that video conferencing gets most of the job done, but it’s no substitute for in-person meetings when building lasting and effective relationships. Why then should our pandemic contingency plan become the default way we continue to do business? It is important that, as companies rethink why, how and how often business travel is done, they do not inadvertently let critical relationships suffer.

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Sales visits, leadership meetings and client work are the biggest reasons for business travel, which ties in with 76 per cent of travellers saying face-to-face is better than remote working in these instances. This isn’t surprising since the emotive cues of showing up for people, signalling reliability and gaining trust are long proven. Business people have long upheld the implicit power of a handshake in building a good first impression and lasting relationship. The current revenge travel boom is happening because people have felt the drawbacks of physical distance and are making up for lost time.

Similar long-term budget reductions in branding or asset maintenance expenditure, for example, have been well-studied. Resulting short-term dips in related performance can be mitigated and in some extreme cases, longer dips can be recovered but saving on expenses that are critical to business performance will come back to bite in the long term.

But the need to be present in business isn’t just a matter of opinion. Industry headlines tell us that companies are aware and already investing in business travel. From the parts of the globe where Covid restrictions were lifted earlier, we already see the spike in business travel – or the business version of “revenge” travel.

Business travel will like-for-like reduce in time to come – there are more economical and planet-friendly ways of catching up. But inversely, real-life “top-ups” will always be needed, and right now we have not had any top-ups for some time, so we really need to catch up.

Navigating inflation to travel more, not spend more

With inflation causing the costs of travel to spike, increasing travel budgets may not translate into more travel right now, but doubling travel need not mean doubling budgets. So how do companies ramp up the amount of travel while being careful with expenditure? We see technology and prioritisation as the answer to delivering business travel that is lean and mean, especially among Singaporean companies where traditional travel solutions are still commonplace.

Business travel can be a strong driver of business success. But business travel will always require spending, and so it deserves a clinical, evidence-based approach that is centred on purpose and impact. Well-managed travel means optimising towards expenditure that drives sustainable and rewarding gains.

All in all, tech-driven business travel management gives you a far better return on your investment. Technology can be used to give you quicker and greater access to fares, reduce structural costs and provide travellers with the information they need to travel well, safely and impactfully.

While having all the right tools and self-service options makes things easier, talking to the right people when travellers need help or something goes wrong ranks high in importance for companies. In an industry that is built on connecting people, technology enables better access to reliable human support whenever and wherever.

Expectations are higher in today’s global remote working environment where travel complexities still exist and the concept of out-of-hours no longer applies. But aside from the business aspect, the move towards technology is also about empowering the travellers of today to choose how they travel and having easy mobile access to everything they need on the go.

The reopening of the world is not the right time to be cutting back on business travel and valuable connections. People nurturing relationships, business or otherwise, and seizing new opportunities point towards the current revenge travel boom. To set a strong trajectory of growth, companies must reframe how they perceive business travel costs and measure its true impact and value. Can your business afford to miss opportunities in 2022?

The writer is founder and managing director of TruTrip