Many serviced apartment operators have already been able to register the trend through high occupancy rates last year. Now the current "Meeting & EventBarometer 2022/2023" from the German National Tourist Board (DZT), the GCB German Convention Bureau and the EVVC European Association of Event Centers also confirms this:
In 2022, the number of international business trips to Germany increased from 5 to 11 million, more than doubling year-on-year. The business travel segment has thus reached around 70 per cent of the record level from the pre-crisis year 2019. What's more, Germany has further strengthened its position as the number one business travel destination for Europeans with 9.2 million business trips, followed by France (4 million) and Spain (2.9 million).
At the same time, the number of attendees at face-to-face events rose by an impressive 246 percent to 172 million. Added to this last year were a further 28.5 million online participants in a hybrid event and another 53.4 million purely online participants. While the latter numbered 327 million in the previous year, face-to-face events with hybrid elements have thus emerged as the driving force in the event market. In total, 2.6 million events with 266.4 million attendees were held in Germany in 2022 across all formats (online, hybrid, analog).
Serviced apartments for events
Serviced apartments, which per se count business travellers as their core clientele, are also feeling the growing demand from European business travellers for meetings, conventions and events. They also use the apartments as a home office away from home due to their living facilities or stay longer for further business appointments or plan a subsequent bleisure stay in the city. In this sense, the average business trip duration has already risen from 1.8 to 2.9 nights since the Business Re-Start (VDR Business Travel Analysis).
Nevertheless, efforts are also growing here for sustainable stays. At its annual conference in Berlin in April 2023, the VDR business travel association emphasised how actively and intensively travel management departments of many companies are currently working on a climate-friendly travel process chain. "Sustainability, sustainability, sustainability - that has been the dominant theme of all the companies present at the conference from all sectors, and they all want to learn from each other with best practices," reports Anett Gregorius, founder and owner of Apartmentservice. "Above all, accommodation providers are challenged here with greater transparency of their green measures. On our booking portal, for example, partner properties can inform about this with symbols and texts."
At www.apartmentservice.de, companies, relocaters and business travellers can find a wide selection of serviced apartments in major cities, but also increasingly in central smaller business destinations.