Business travelers: What are your company’s travel budgeting looking like post-Covid?

In the automotive wholesale industry, it’s coming to a grinding stop. Auctions would lay out outlandish bills for airfare, hotels, and rentals.

Now most dealers buy online.

We are still extremely limited. HQ in Canada.

Can’t judge yet - I usually travel 30 weeks a year to see clients. Right now effectively zero or one.

No vision into the future because in many markets local employees have not returned to the office - nevermind travel.

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Airbnb ceo said it would never return to 2019 levels

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He's full of ****. As soon as restrictions are lifted everywhere and the vaccine has been distributed enough to see us on our way to herd immunity, travel is going to explode after people have been locked down in their own homes for 18-24 months.

No way, companies are saving too much money without all the travel, plus productivity is up big. It may never return to 2019 levels.

I can see a boom in recreational travel but I think business travel will take a long time to recover. People want to get out and make up for a year’s worth of canceled vacations and boredom. Companies though, still face the liability of making reluctant employees travel, plus they’ve figured out the massive cost savings of remote meetings.

My company used to have a ton of regional travel, so many meetings that could have been phone calls. It’s about 15% of what it was February 2020. I asked if there was a plan to restart our monthly HQ meetings that require travel and was told “we haven’t even considered that yet.”

Seeing a mix. Construction industry is ready to go back needs to be on site. Software is even more remote than before so far but the sales folk are getting stir crazy

Our CEO and the president of my division are dying because they can't travel to events. It's killing them to stay home.

They go to "meetings", then come home and post all over social media of themselves hiking, canoeing, bike riding, sightseeing, and never mention the meetings.


Seems to me 90% of all actual work can take place online for meetings and such.

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Seems to me 90% of all actual work can take place online for meetings and such.

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This, and I'm curious how you sales guys honestly believe your future and demand will be? If travel is a huge portion of your job, I hate to say this but its now possible for 1 person to do what 2 used to do right?

Making a phone call and zoom sales pitch takes a hell of a lot less time for 2 different clients then flying from Atl to Miami to DFW and back to Atl....

Its not just a savings in travel expense, there's a potential for huge savings in payroll imo.

It is really market segment dependent. Of the industries we serve, under different business units and sales teams, some are not taking face to face, on site meetings and others it's imperative if you want to be secure.

Such as inks into the corrugated fiberboard producers, and whiteners into the paper market, totally remote.

Equipment and coatings into the recycled biomass marketplace is about 70% back to pre-rona travel and is a must to get on site and face to face.

In short, if your key decision maker is part of a large corporation in an office setting, usually in a city, they don't want you around.

Rural, suburban small to midsize sawmills, pallet manufacturers, site developers, composters we serve, it is key to be on site.