In Asia Pacific, the Omnicron variant impacted the business events sector's modest recovery in Q1 this year. Photo Credit: GettyImages/fongleon356
Global companies are seeing a significant surge in international business travel in recent months.
According to the 2022 Global Business Events Barometer, 80% of global
companies surveyed resumed domestic travel in 2022 Q1 (up 16% from 2021
Q4), and more than half (55%) had resumed international travel (up 77%
from the previous quarter) following the easing of Covid travel
restrictions across the world.
The report, released by the Events Industry Council (EIC), evaluates
business events industry trends by monitoring changes relative to the
pandemic in two key areas: hotel group room nights and request for
proposal (RFP) activity.
In Asia Pacific, the hotel group room nights index and the RFP index
indicated a modest recovery in group activity through the start of 2022.
However, this recovery across the business events sector took a
slight step back as of Q1, in part due to the impact of the Omicron
variant in key markets. The slight slowdown in recovery was indicated by
both RFPs (down 2% from 2021 Q4) and hotel group room nights (down 10%
from previous quarter). In Asia Pacific, destinations leading RFP
activity in Q1 were Australia, followed by India, China, Thailand and
Japan.
The barometer also revealed a slight decrease (down 3% from the
previous quarter) in events booked with shorter lead times (within 12
months).
For events in future periods, RFP activity increased slightly (up 2%
from the previous quarter) but is still significantly lower than 2019
levels.
Commenting on the Barometer, EIC CEO, Amy Calvert, said: " The start
of 2022 hasn’t been without its challenges, with the reality of variants
and adjusting to living in an endemic state as well as the
Russia-Ukraine war and unstable geopolitical and economic realities
impacting our performance and our people. I am confident that we will
continue to demonstrate resilience and collaborate in an effort to share
best practice and insights as we navigate our continued recovery.”
Adam Sacks, managing director of Oxford Economics, added: “Global
business events face a longer recovery trajectory than other travel
segments, but in-person events remain indispensable to business
competitiveness, and we expect continued recovery as global travel
resumes.”
The Global Business Events Barometer was created by Oxford Economics
using data provided by Amadeus Hospitality, Cvent, the Global Business
Travel Association and STR Global.