Business Travel: Swiss Travel Managers See Black
Business travel managers and 84 percent of business travelers expect business to remain stable or grow in 2017, underlines the latest study by AirPlus on movements in the business travel community. However, the Swiss only partially share the international optimism.
Only 15% of Swiss travel managers expect more travel in 2017 than in the previous year. In 2016, this figure was still 23%, already 11 percentage points behind 2015, meaning that the Swiss are more pessimistic about the future than their international colleagues (33%). At the same time, however, the number of travel managers in Switzerland expecting fewer business trips this year fell from 16% in 2016 to 8% at present (13% globally).
Expectations are mixed
According to AirPlus, the falling cost of business travel as well as the non-homogeneous Swiss export market could be responsible for this contradictory situation. While some industries (e.g. pharmaceuticals) continue to do well, the processing industry (e.g. mechanical engineering) is struggling. Swiss business travelers are more confident about the situation: 13% believe there will be less travel in 2017 (2016: 17%), while 29% expect an increase (2016: 19%).
In addition to the strong Swiss franc, this could also be due to another trend among Swiss companies, namely the relocation of production facilities abroad
New travel orientations
The above reasons could increase the need for business travel at the management level. On an international level, Americans have the highest expectations for 2017: 71% of corporate travel managers expect travel numbers to increase. In 2016, the figure was just 26%. Also optimistic are 60% of Indian travel managers and 78% of business travelers, who expect an increase in business trips due to the economic boom and rising exports.
Swiss pessimistic
The economic impact on their market has been increasingly viewed more positively by international travel managers in recent years. 2017 is the first year in which the number of positively minded travel planners (29%) is greater than that of their negatively minded colleagues (23%). This means that the proportion of optimistic managers has more than doubled in the last three years (2014: 14%).
In Switzerland, the picture is different: Only 5% of Swiss travel managers believe that the current economic environment will have a positive impact on business travel. The number who see a negative impact has fallen from 31% in 2016 to 20%. This means that 71% of travel managers see no economic impact on business travel (2016: 62%). Swiss business travelers are significantly more optimistic, putting them more in line with the Western European average.
22% of Business Travelers in Switzerland each expect the economy to have a positive or negative impact on the business travel segment.
The 12th "International Travel Management Study by AirPlus International" can be found under this Link
