The “bleisure” trend is unlikely to go away anytime soon, according to FCM Consulting’s latest industry report. Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/Song_about_summer
Corporate travel witnessed gradual but consistent trip growth in Q1 of 2024, according to FCM Consulting’s latest Global Quarterly Trend Report. This trend is expected to continue into Q2 of the same year.
The report showed that ticket prices had increased, with an average
of 11% above the same month in pre-pandemic 2019. Encouragingly,
however, flight costs in the same class had dropped by 16% compared to
January 2021.
Bertrand Saillet, managing director of FCM Travel Asia, shared that
pricing for travel had remained strong amidst incremental growth in
demand this year.
“Global inflation is estimated to be at 5.9% in 2024, unemployment
rates are trending lower, and consumer confidence is returning once
again,” he said. “The global economy has been resilient against
increases in interest rates, and with the economic outlook being
somewhat positive for the remaining year, corporate budgets are
increasing with confidence and enabling steady business travel trends.”
Saillet expects pricing to remain strong in most locations, but
geopolitical conflicts would continue to bring uncertainty to the global
economy.
Less guesswork for the industry
Referring to the
report, Saillet said that stable booking volumes in Q1 of 2024 meant
that corporate travel demand remained steady, with airlines, hotels and
car hire now being able to rely on consistent volumes across the board.
With travellers continuing the trend of early bookings and more days
away, average booking days have increased to 23.3 and average days away
have also grown to 4.4 – an observation that Saillet described as
“unsurprising, given the continued business ‘bleisure’ trend”.
The forecast for seats offered across top corporate global airlines
in 2024 is set to be 6% above 2019, with the number of flights offered
down by 1% – top corporate airlines globally show that low-cost carriers
(LCC) are also performing well.
“Interestingly, LCCs will represent 31% of global seats offered in
2024,” Saillet said. “That is a 1% increase versus 2019 – with 28% of
all flights offered also being on an LCC carrier, again a rise of 1%.”