The future of business travel
Covid-19 transformed business travel overnight. While maintaining existing trust can happen with less travel, building new relationships will always require meeting in person.
The leaders who cling to pre-pandemic travel routines are leaving millions on the table—while their competitors are already reinvesting those hours and budgets into what truly moves the needle: trust, results, and strategic impact.
My professional life changed dramatically in the last 12 months due to the Covid Pandemic. Probably just like yours. The routine of my business travel changed too. From a monthly rhythm of traveling to our clients, it came to a full stop in March 2020. And it’s been like that since then.
Key takeaways
- Leaders need to recognize that the majority of business travel can be replaced with effective online delivery, especially when trust is already established with your teams and clients.
- You can achieve the same results with up to 50% less business travel, particularly for operational matters, which translates into significant cost and time savings for your organization.
- While online meetings work well for established relationships, leaders must still invest in face-to-face interactions when building or restoring trust, as these moments remain critical for long-term success.
Our clients are located all over the place. To serve them, we often travel. But since Covid, our delivery work changed overnight from 10% online, to 95% online. Our live sessions went from 90% in-person to 5%.
Luckily, we were ready to shift gears fast. In the last seven years, we already got used to working online. We made the investments in the technology to enable this years ago. This was mostly through our partnership and the work that we do for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Their teams are all across the globe in locations that are not always easy to visit.
Trust
An important part of our work involves the programs that we run with Senior Leadership Teams. We work on the hard side of their business (The WHAT) and the soft side (The relationships, leadership effectiveness, The HOW).
Covid-19 has hit corporate travel hard. A survey in January 2021 by the Global Business Travel Association found that 79% of its members had cancelled all or most business travel. Bill Gates thinks the shift will be permanent. 'My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel will go away forever,' he says. The boss of one aviation firm sees a 100% return. Bernstein goes for up to 24% never coming back. Credit Suisse reckons 10-20% will disappear for good. Citi, another bank thinks it’s going to be 25%.
Food for thought
Maintaining trust. Is all business travel as necessary as we think it was? I believe that we can achieve the same results with 50% less business travel going forward. Especially when it comes to running the ‘What’ of a company and trust is already established. Imagine the savings.
Building and restoring trust. Building relationships internally and externally will continue to involve business travel. Even more so when trust has to be restored.
Future corporate offices will serve more as community places. Where people occasionally meet and primarily invest in relationships. The HOW side of the business.
Good technology, privacy and safety are critical to effective remote sessions. Appropriate investments is money well spent.
The future belongs to leaders who know when to log in and when to show up—because sustainable success is built on mastering both the digital handshake and the power of presence.
Over to you.