As business travel bottoms out, near-term optimism remains high
As we have watched travel come to a near standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions and opinions abound on how its effect will vary across different segments or categories. Will corporate or leisure travel return first? Will travel permanently become a smaller part of how the world does business?
We have some hints as to how the business travel community is viewing the evolving situation, thanks to the Global Business Travel Association, which was quick to begin polling its membership on the crisis. It fielded its first coronavirus-related survey February 4, before the disease even had an official name.
There are many things I wish were different about the series and how GBTA shares it (see comments at the end of this post), but its quickness to take its members' pulse has allowed them to track sentiment over time.
My biggest takeaways from watching the GBTA poll results up through the latest on April 8 are that active business travel has essentially bottomed out and expectations for its return are probably overly optimistic, despite shifting in a huge way between March 23 and April 8.
