Business travelers are boarding planes and hitting the road again

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Execs boarding planes, hitting the road again, but business travel still below pre-pandemic levels

Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-NewsBret Piatt, CEO of San Antonio-based Jungle Disk, has resumed traveling to meet in person with some of his cybersecurity company’s biggest customers.

A traveler checks out a flight status board as he heads to the gates at San Antonio International Airport on May 27. Major airline executives say they’re seeing business travel rebounding, though not up to pre-pandemic levels.“Those sorts of things would not have happened before COVID,” Piatt said. Of the 520 respondents polled in April, 20 percent said they have scrapped or suspended most or all domestic business trips, down from 33 percent in a February poll. Regarding international business travel, the percentage of those who reduced such trips fell to 45 percent in April from 71 percent in February.

Employees at Frost Bank are “cautiously traveling more,” spokesman Bill Day said, noting that the company’s operations are in Texas and thus its travel budget is fairly small. “Where it makes sense, we still emphasize efficiency, so we do a lot more meeting via Microsoft Teams than we do traveling.” “There’s so much more pre-planning than there used to be,” he said. “There’s a lot of just kind of added stress.”Travelers check in and head to gates at San Antonio International Airport on May 27.“People have more anxiety about travel, but I think they still see and value the human contact and relationship piece,” he said.

Harteveldt said they’ve also told him that 15 to 30 percent of their workers are not ready to get on a plane or in a car again. “The good news is that after two years of virtual work arrangements, Americans recognize the unmatched value of face-to-face meetings and say they are ready to start getting back on the road for business travel,” Rogers said.On ExpressNews.com:Although San Antonio International Airport does not routinely track the number of business travelers passing through it, passenger counts generally are rising. About 767,099 passengers flew through the airport in April, up 40.

“We expect United will benefit more than any other airline as that recovery continues,” Kirby said. “International, especially Asia, is far from fully recovered. United is just more exposed to those sectors.” There are far fewer flights than there were before the pandemic, and hotels are sometimes limiting capacity, Harteveldt said. As a result, executives may postpone or scrap trips for business, which could affect the segment’s recovery.

By his observations, the volume of exhibitors and speakers is about 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels, while attendance is 40 to 60 percent of what it was.

 

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