2021: the advent of ‘purposeful travel’?

Paul Tilstone is managing partner at business travel consultancy Festive Road

Early in December we suggested that 2021 would be the beginning of an era of ‘purposeful travel’, where companies will become more focused on where the true value of business travel lies.

We aren’t in the habit of trying to define eras, but the evidence from a listening exercise with buyers across the globe indicates that this will be so and we felt it important enough to share with the wider travel management community.

But why and what do we mean by an era of purposeful travel?

Well, I think it’s fair to say that our sector has been through a long period of aggregated travel volume growth (with a few sizeable blips along the way) and we’ve seen incremental evolutions in travel and meetings management in the last decade. This was brought to a shuddering halt by the chaos created by the virus and the associated travel restrictions. 

What we are hearing is that the pause in travel volumes, and the changes to the way organisations have had to operate, is providing this unique opportunity to think about travel differently – as an enabler as opposed to a budget line.  The opportunity to consider the true value of travel is now upon us.

Of course, travel managers and their organisations will still reference 2021 budgets against 2019 levels as it’s the simplest way to assess travel programme status for the year ahead, especially given all the unknowns and complexity that still exists.

But it won’t be too long before they stop thinking about travel budgets as a percentage of 2019 volume – an outdated exercise that won’t help any company succeed in the years ahead. 

Looking at travel management from the top down and asking yourself what percentage cost you can save doesn’t cut it any more in an era where the focus needs to be wholly balanced across the accelerated importance of the triple bottom line: people, profit and planet. Behavioural change is forcing companies to ask themselves “how valuable is the investment we make in every travel dollar to our business?”

A purposeful travel approach, our name for the ‘bottom-up, demand-led’ trend we are beginning to see take hold among leading corporate travel managers, enables a smarter conversation that focuses on whether being there in-person will expedite or improve the organisation’s objectives.

It’s the logical next step in our post-pandemic evolution after the ‘permissible travel’ phase – for which we developed a framework – where companies have restructured their travel programmes and recommenced travel where it is government approved, company approved and employee agreed.

In the ‘Purposeful Travel Model’ we are developing and plan to publish in 2021, we take a ‘default to virtual’ approach to ensure there’s no vested interest in the successful return of travel volumes and no bias in how we consider the value of travel.

Only by doing this, by challenging the pre-pandemic status quo with “can we undertake the objectives effectively via virtual meetings”, will we get to the truth of where face-to-face, and therefore travel, brings true value.

This will provide a true picture of what travel volumes and types will look like in the future – and help the supplier community adjust and evolve. It isn’t heresy to ask ourselves the question above. In fact, it’s vital we do so to secure and even increase the importance of our sector to those we serve.

In the Purposeful Travel Model we consider the need for travel, at the travel programme strategy phase, across three clearly defined areas: 

• organisational travel
• people-related travel
• customer travel

Beneath these three headings are over 30 sub-categories. Where this definition of travel differs from previous definitions of ‘internal vs external’ travel is that it recognises the interdependence of travel types. 

For example, under-invest in organisational travel (leadership meetings, M&A activity, auditing etc) and in people-related travel (talent acquisition, motivation, building culture) and the impact will be felt in the ‘customer’ category. This challenges the previous belief that when the going gets tough, you can simply cut the internal travel.

What’s clear from what we have seen already with the travel buyers we have engaged with in this project, is that some travel types will be questioned and disappear whereas others might grow in importance and expand. And for each company the answer will be different based on their culture, what their competition is doing and what their clients demand.

The aggregated view, through a purposeful travel lens, will be of a new travel management landscape, where there may be fewer trips (and if Bill gates is right, then considerably less) but the impact of travel that does occur will be heightened, and the value better understood and championed.

This changes the corporate mindset from asking that dreaded question “what internal travel can we cut in Q4 to meet our budgets” to “what would we get in return if we invested in more travel to achieve our objectives?”.

Purposeful travel is our chance to raise our game, become more valued and more strategic and I, for one, will be walking headlong into such an era with optimism, reflecting the opportunity this approach brings to our sector.