Business travelers haven't issued many more complaints to airlines during the pandemic than before, but their level of satisfaction with how airlines handled those complaints has dropped significantly, according to a new American Customer Satisfaction Index report.
ACSI between April 1 and Sept. 30 interviewed 4,642 respondents about their experience with travel industry suppliers for its ACSI Special Covid-19 Travel Report 2020, released Wednesday, and used the survey data in a model to estimate customer satisfaction on an ascending scale from 1 to 100. About 23 percent of the respondents who used airlines were business travelers, as were 20 percent of hotel customer respondents and 31 percent of car rental customer respondents.
The share of business traveler respondents who reported having made complaints to airlines didn't rise significantly from ASCI's previous survey conducted from April 2019 to March 2020, to 33 percent from 32 percent. On an ascending scale of 1 to 100, business traveler satisfaction in the most recent survey scored at 73, indicating they were reasonably satisfied with how airlines handled complaints, but not as much as they were before the pandemic, when the score was 79. ACSI attributed these changes to ongoing corporate travel restrictions. "More than ever, business travel is a necessity rather than a choice, and those that still travel may be missing the level of service they are used to," the report said.
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Business travelers this year also have been less satisfied with airline carry-on and paid checked-bag services. In the prior survey, before the pandemic, business travelers who paid for checked bags had a satisfaction level of 82, but that level dropped to 78 during the pandemic. At the same time, satisfaction scores among business travelers who paid for carry-ons declined from 77 to 70. Scores among business travelers who did not pay for checked-bag fees increased during the pandemic from 77 to 81.
Business travelers' satisfaction scores for how hotels handled complaints also fell from 80 to 72. The share of business travelers who complained stayed at 26 percent. Scores for car rental suppliers' handling of complaints among business travelers held steady at 75. The share who complained, however, rose from 40 percent to 43 percent.