About three-quarters of corporate travel buyers and procurement professionals surveyed this month by the Global Business Travel Association project their organizations will resume non-essential domestic business travel sometime this year, if they haven't already.
About 60 percent of the approximately 302 respondents to the GBTA survey, which was conducted online March 8-13, indicated they believe their organizations will restart such travel in the second half of 2021, with about 24 percent projecting no restart until 2022. About 7 percent indicated such travel already has restarted, with the remainder suggesting it would start by the end of June.
The survey is the latest in a series of monthly polls GBTA has conducted of its membership to gauge Covid-19 recovery sentiment. About 55 percent of travel manager respondents in the March poll indicated their travelers were "somewhat willing" or "very willing" to travel for business, the same figure as in its February poll, but the share of respondents who said travelers were "very willing" increased to 9 percent from 4 percent.
Meanwhile, GBTA for the first time asked respondents their opinion on digital health passports, the efforts by several organizations and governments to develop secure apps with which travelers can demonstrate to airlines and border officials their Covid-19 testing and vaccination status. About 64 percent of respondents expressed that the use of such passports to help "open up travel and eliminate the need for mandated quarantine and multiple tests" was good policy, with one in 10 indicating it was bad policy. About three-quarters of those who thought the passports were bad policy cited data-privacy concerns, and about half noted that countries that do not issue such passports would be punished should they become a standard.
RELATED:To learn more about digital health passports, check out the videos from BTN's recent virtual conference, which showcased digital health passport players AOKpass, CommonPass, IATA Travel Pass and VeriFly.