This year's business travel analysis by the German Travel Management Association (Verbandes Deutsches Reisemanagement e.V. - VDR) has identified a growing trend towards bundling business trips. Business travellers are thus not travelling as often as before, but for longer. Serviced flats are benefiting from the trend, experts say.
For the 21st time, the VDR Business Travel Analysis analyses the travel behaviour of German companies and public sector organisations. For the year 2022/23 this means: With the increasing end of the pandemic, the market has already been showing a recovery since 2021 and was able to count 75.1 million business trips last year. This represents an increase of 82 per cent compared to 2021. 8.4 million people, 3 million more than the previous year, packed their bags last year - a trend driven mainly by the larger companies. Spending doubled to 26.9 billion euros compared to the previous year.
The serviced flat segment also clearly felt this increased demand last year, according to the Apartmentservice market report, generating an average of 80 percent annual occupancy for 2022. "This is more than in the pre-pandemic year 2019 and also shows how much better known this hotel segment has become and it is good and important that the supply here continues to increase significantly in the coming years," says Anett Gregorius, owner of Apartmentservice and publisher of the market report.
For the Verband Deutsches Reisemanagement e.V. (VDR), the overall upward trend in business travel is above all also a clear sign of the pent-up demand in companies following the Corona restrictions. At the same time, it becomes clear how necessary business travel and thus personal meetings continue to be for the German economy.
A quarter of business trips four days and more
Nevertheless, there were 195.4 million business trips in 2019 - meaning that the volume of the German business travel market has now moved away significantly from previous years. This is also due to the sharp decline in day trips from 70 per cent in 2019 to now 45 per cent in Germany and abroad. The new focus on climate-conscious business travel is one reason, but so are rising costs in the wake of the energy crisis as well as cancellations of offers due to the general shortage of employees, which is why online solutions for shorter meetings have become an alternative. "100 per cent of those surveyed said they had felt the cost increases since last year," said VDR Vice President Inge Pirner in July at the presentation of the business travel analysis.
As a result, all companies are now travelling less and longer with an average length of stay of 2.4 days, compared to just over one and a half days in 2019. Particularly the larger companies with over 1,500 employees are now bundling their business appointments and trips. While every fifth business trip lasted four days or more in 2021, it is now already every fourth. "But the trend towards longer trips has now also arrived in the SME sector, not least because of the lack of domestic German flights," says Inge Pirner. And Anett Gregorius emphasises: "Those who stay longer in one place want more space than in a hotel, a home-like feeling and the possibility of self-catering. This is exactly why serviced flats were once designed for longer business trips." With a view to making business trips and processes as climate-neutral as possible, CO2 consumption data also clearly show that staying in serviced flats generates less CO2 than in hotels, because the houses manage with less space, energy, services and thus also staff.
The DACH region is travelled the most
So there is a lot of movement in the business travel world - this is also shown by the change in international travel destinations. While the USA and China still dominated the business travel ranking in 2015, Switzerland and Austria were in the lead last year among the companies and organisations surveyed. Particularly in view of the growing trend towards bleisure and remote work in business travel tourism, this is an interesting trend, not least for stays in serviced flats.
Further results and analyses of the VDR Business Travel Analysis 2023 can also be found at www.soapart-insight.de, the trade magazine of Apartmentservice, as well as suitable serviced flat offers for bundled business trips also at www.apartmentservice.de or by telephone at +49 (0)30 96 06 09 49-13.