Five reasons for putting the brakes on travel

1. Travel restrictions and requirements by specific governments

2. Employee apprehension. Some don’t want to travel to the office, let alone a country with high infection rates and low quality of care. Costs and the potential inability to repatriate or care for sick staff will prevent this travel.

3. Many clients do not want to see partners face to face, and thus even people willing to travel will not be welcome.

4. Cost savings

5. Embracing technology, though many global organizations still see the value of face-to-face meetings.

Several points will determine if there is a further delay in the resumption of travel

1. How many will be vaccinated and how long will it take? What about the boosters? Will they protect?

2. Many thought variants would not be a big deal, but now we are being proven wrong. Delta and Lambda are causing infection rates to soar. Many who were not as worried before are concerned.

While I do see a further delay of travel, how we do business must change. A new business method is beginning to emerge. It’s not just Zoom calls and conference calls; new ways to collaborate and cooperate will emerge. Growth will still be expected, and new opportunities have to be evaluated. New platforms are emerging that help companies identify new business potentials. Companies that can take advantage of this will excel; those that cannot will further shrink.

The idea of business travel re-emerging in 2021 or 2022 will, unfortunately, not happen. We are not even close to a resumption of business travel. In fact, it will get worse before it gets better. That said, we must evolve our business practices, and there are many discussions going on. My guess is that some aspects of work-from-home will continue, but I believe we are going to see some changes in how we view a company.

So what should companies do? I would recommend looking back to 2019 and evaluate the travel that yielded results. Determine what is internal travel and what is client-focused. Client-focused should get priority. Evaluate the types of meetings you hold online and bring more value to them. Have a plan for the resumption of travel and how you will prioritize this—you need to see what is going to bring value. This is a chance to restructure how we build travel into our companies.

The future of business travel is unknown. We still have to get through this pandemic a bit more before we really know what will happen, but it is important to have a plan for any scenario.