Business Travel News' annual Corporate Travel 100 faced an unprecedented challenge this year. With business travel at record lows during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, business travel's biggest spenders logged the smallest fraction of their annual air volume after February 2020—and much of that, as noted by a handful of companies on our list this year, was spent on repatriations after which employees were meant to stay put.
Most companies on BTN's list this year implemented broad business travel suspensions in 2020. Essential workers ventured out on the road—infrastructure project teams, critical client projects, healthcare and pharmaceutical—these were needed to keep our communities functioning. As we all know, the balance of what normally would be in-person business meetings or even a chat around the water cooler took place virtually, with digitally mediated interactions taking the place of in-person handshakes, shared meals and even high-power summits to close important business deals.
We did it—and some businesses reported great performance numbers throughout the pandemic even without the benefit of traveling to see their clients and partners. BTN's CT 100 No. 1 business travel spender, Amazon, reported just 20 percent of its 2019 U.S.-booked air volume, but nearly doubled its net income to more than $21 billion in 2020, up from $11.6 in 2019. Given the online retailer's specific business proposition during a pandemic, however, that kind of outsized performance is an outlier.
Other companies also performed well. No. 2 Deloitte reported a 3.9 percent revenue increase in U.S. dollars for fiscal year 2020 and that trajectory continued to 5.5 percent in FY 2021, which ended in May. CT 100 No. 7 EY reported a 4.1 percent revenue increase for its fiscal year 2020 and the CT 100 No. 12 Microsoft reported 14 percent total revenue increase for FY 2020. These are a few examples—not all companies thrived in 2020. CT 100 No. 15 Siemens took a 2 percent revenue hit in 2020 but has rebounded in 2021 without the benefit of a business travel restart.
So can business thrive without travel? Judging from the data above, the answer may seem straightforward. Plenty of CEOs and finance executives have touted the money they've saved from not traveling. Amazon was perhaps the boldest in this regard. CFO Brian Olsavsky cited $1 billion in business travel savings in 2020 during the company's third quarter earnings call. But companies may not want to answer so fast.
The pandemic set up an artificial environment in which nearly all companies had to operate without the benefit of in-person interactions. Coming out of that environment, will the willingness and ability to travel—to customers, to partners, to professional development events for their own employees—give companies a competitive edge? The truth is, we'll have to wait to see. We're not there yet—and while 2021 has not been as depressed for business travel as 2020, the recovery to date has not been as robust as many companies and, indeed, the travel industry had hoped.
What Happens When Business Travel Recovers?
A summer surge of the Covid-19 delta variant put a damper on what was looking to be a relatively good business travel recovery going into the third quarter. Airlines Reporting Corp logged North America's travel agency bookings at 48.5 percent recovery on July 11, compared to the commensurate week in 2019. As of the week of Sep. 19, however, those corporate agency bookings had fallen to a comparison of 37 percent of 2019.
That said, surveys conducted by the Global Business Travel Association show that travel managers believe a strong majority—68 percent—of would-be business travelers are ready to travel once their companies release them to do so. Another encouraging signal for business travel is the impending Nov. 1 opening of U.S. borders to international travelers, signaling to companies with U.S.-booked travel volume that the world will continue to open up with or without them.
When that happens, though, travelers will likely return to programs that are altered in several ways:
Fewer business trips overall – Many companies on BTN's Corporate Travel 100 see a future where virtual meetings take the place of at least some business travel use cases, particularly for internal meetings. Several CT 100 companies have invested in upgraded technologies and platforms to facilitate better virtual interactions. At least one is renegotiating hotel and meeting contracts to push through a hybrid in-person/virtual strategy, which looks to be a sea change for conferences and meetings moving forward.
Environmental stewardship – Business travel reduction and virtual meeting strategies also play into an increased focus on business travel sustainability. What was a growing concern around climate change prior to 2020 has emerged through the crucible of the pandemic as a marquee issue for corporate executives. In some companies—especially those with carbon footprints dominated by travel emissions—travel managers have become heavily involved in emissions reduction efforts.
Traveler safety and well-being – At least at the outset of the business travel recovery, many companies will be laser focused on traveler well-being and duty of care. Some companies have changed their air policies to include more access to premium cabins to maintain some semblance of distance between their business travelers and other air passengers. The industry may see more latitude in hotel class of service, as well, to ensure business travelers can feel more supported while traveling. But different companies will take different approaches—some will demand more compliance to corporate preferred suppliers, while others seem to have loosened those policies to align more with personal preference. Still others are focused on communication while on the road and digitizing the travel experience in ways that keep the traveler and the company well connected throughout the business trip.
Pre-trip approval – While each company may have a unique approach to duty of care and traveler well-being, pre-trip approval has peaked as a must-have aspect for travel management. With a handful of exceptions, companies that didn’t have pre-trip approval prior to the pandemic have largely deployed it in some way, even if it is not automated into the booking workflow. Many companies have invested in the technology to smooth process; if they already had the tech, they are now paying closer attention to it. Some companies told BTN they now are reporting to senior executives the percent of travel requests that get approved.
Travel Management Relationships
Some companies among the CT 100 conducted consolidation exercises or changed their TMC relationships altogether in 2020. No. 21 ranked Google moved its business to Amex GBT during the pandemic, as did No. 74 Eli Lilly & Company and No. 98 PayPal. This year's No. 87 BP completed its transition to Egencia in 2020 and FCM grabbed three of the CT 100 in this year's list. From all reports the TMC tender environment has been active for both large programs like the CT 100 and smaller programs as well. All these changes are amidst a backdrop of drastically reduced global travel volumes, so TMCs are looking to the future to hit paydirt from new client wins.
Even without a change in travel management partners, several CT 100 companies told BTN they did initiate changes in their commercial agreements—namely, away from the transaction fee model—looking for stability after Covid-19 eviscerated travel agency staffing. TMCs will find that direction to be a welcome change in what promises to remain a bumpy recovery through the remainder of 2021 and into next year.
Methodology
Why are there only 98 companies on BTN's Corporate Travel 100 this year? That's a good question. Due to the massive drop in corporate travel during the pandemic, BTN made the editorial decision to compile this year's Corporate Travel 100 based on the same list of companies as last year and followed up to understand the impact of the pandemic on their programs. Two companies from the 2020 CT 100 merged with another two companies on the list, effectively reducing our universe of follow-ups to 98.
BTN's 2021 CT 100 is based on 2020 air tickets purchased at all U.S. points of sale for domestic and international business travel. BTN executive director of conference content and strategy David Meyer contacted each company on the 2020 Corporate Travel 100 to conduct a follow up interview and online survey to find out how each company was dealing with business travel reduction, how they were adjusting travel programs in the interim and whether the hiatus would drive fundamental changes.
Certain companies decline the BTN outreach. For companies that chose not to confirm business U.S.-booked air travel volumes, BTN used industry sources, published reports and other intelligence about specific programs to provide an estimate of U.S.-booked air volume. Estimates are noted in the listings. The BTN editorial team would like to thank David Meyer for his efforts this year—and every year—to compile the list and survey this important group of business travel experts.