On the Up and Up

Posted in Blog, The Wire by AirPlus US Team
Tags: business travel, The Wire, travel volumes

Business travel buyers and suppliers project rising travel volumes and identify new pressures from upper management for the second half of 2010.

Airlines, hotels and car rental companies in the United States reported good to excellent recovery patterns as business travel hit an acceptable stride in the second quarter of 2010. These earnings numbers are supported by worldwide travel agency sales data from Airlines Reporting Corporation, which has shown an average increase of 21.7 percent over the first half of 2010 based on 7.5 percent higher domestic transactions and 11 percent more international transactions when compared to the same period last year. In an online survey of 80 travel buyers and suppliers conducted in late July and early August by AirPlus International, rates of optimism surrounding travel volume increases for the second half of 2010 showed some marked differences for buyers versus suppliers.

The majority of both groups projected business travel volume increases overall, and a larger percentage of buyers than suppliers actually expect to see increases in their company‘s business travel volume in the latter half of 2010 when compared to the same period last year. Suppliers, however, showed somewhat more optimism than buyers when asked about the specific rate of that increase.

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Economy or Business? Look at the Whole Picture!

Posted in Blog, Industry Topics by AirPlus Editor
Tags: business class, business travel, flight class booking, travel policy

Booking an Economy Class flight does not always pay off – Reaching your destination rested and relaxed, working during flights: Business Class can make sense, not only on long-distance flights – What counts is having clear travel policies.

The trend in business travel has remained unchanged for the past few years – Economy rather than Business Class. The reasons include the increasing, and indeed sensible, introduction of travel policies and the acute pressure to economize due to the recession over the past two years. Large companies were the first to react to the crisis; smaller ones followed soon after. However, saving money by booking Economy Class tickets does not necessarily show the whole picture of long- or short-haul flights. The health of the travelers and the potential opportunity costs must also be considered when booking a flight.

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European Business Travel on the Rise

Posted in Blog, Facts and Figures by Florian Gränzdörffer
Tags: business travel, business travel index, travel on the rise

Higher percentage of Business Class flights // Intercontinental flights up 24 per-cent // 13 percent increase in hotel stays // 18 percent rise in car rentals

One of the factors reflecting Europe’s recovery from the economic crisis is the latest business-travel figures: in the first six months of 2010, the number of business flights taken by staff of European companies increased by three percent as compared to the same period in 2009. Moreover, the percentage of business travelers flying Business Class has also grown, from eight percent in January 2010 to 10 percent in June. This figure was last reached at the end of 2008, before the economic slump. In total, companies in Europe spent seven percent more on flights in the first half of 2010 than they did in the first half of 2009. These figures are from the latest AirPlus Business Travel Index, a survey conducted by the leading international provider of solutions for business-travel management, covering the first six months of 2010.

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