The United Kingdom's Guild of Travel Management Companies
furnished powerful evidence of business travel's recovery on Wednesday by
revealing it handled more air transactions in the third quarter of 2010 than in
the same period in 2008.
GTMC, which claims to account for 80 percent of business
travel spend in the United Kingdom, did not specify the difference between 2010
and 2008 figures, but said members handled 1.59 million air transactions in the
third quarter of 2010, 12 percent more than in Q3 2009.
All other travel transactions showed an increase on Q3 2009,
with hotel transactions up 10 percent—the first such double-digit percentage
increase since the first quarter of 2008—and car rental up 10 percent. This was
the second successive quarter of growth for the latter category, suggesting
that an 11 percent jump in the second quarter did not entirely result from
emergency repatriations caused by the ash crisis.
Rail was up 7 percent, although this was a smaller increase
after several quarters of double-digit growth. There could be several reasons
for this decline, including a tailing off of the migration of TMC clients onto
online rail booking tools, a fall in public sector travel and tentative
evidence of a partial return from rail to air on domestic U.K. routes where the
two modes compete.
"With the first double-digit increase in hotel bookings
since the first quarter of 2008, it would appear that business travelers are
not just making business trips but are staying overnight," GTMC chief
executive Anne Godfrey said. "Rail has held up well during the recession
but it is now slowing, and it will be interesting to see the impact on rail of
the planned public sector cuts."