German business travellers taking longer trips in 2022

German enterprise travellers are taking longer journeys and shopping for extra enterprise class tickets than they did earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic, in keeping with analysis from company cost specialist AirPlus Worldwide.

AirPlus’s figures for airline ticket transactions confirmed a robust enhance in demand from German travellers through the first half of 2022, with invoicing quantity in June solely 10 per cent decrease than in June 2019.

The AirPlus Enterprise Journey Index additionally recognized how traits have modified up to now three years, with the size of enterprise journeys by Germans rising from a mean of 5 days in 2019 to six.3 days this yr.

This enhance in period was much more pronounced for worldwide journeys from Germany, which rose from a mean of 11.6 days in 2019 to 14.5 days in 2022. In the meantime, the proportion of one-day journeys fell from 17 per cent to 7 per cent over the identical interval.

AirPlus additionally recognized a rise in German organisations reserving enterprise class air journey, which elevated from 9 per cent in 2019 to 13 per cent this yr. This was significantly true on home flights the place the proportion of enterprise class bookings rose from 5 per cent in 2019 to 12 per cent this yr.

The research discovered that some pre-Covid behaviour had began to “return to regular”, such because the lead-in time for bookings. The common booking-to-departure interval rose from 16.3 days in 2021 to 21.4 days this yr, which compares to a mean of 24 days in 2019.

“The development towards longer enterprise journeys is a sign that sustainability is turning into more and more vital for corporations,” mentioned AirPlus CEO Oliver Wagner. 

“Staff are dealing with completely different appointments inside one journey as a substitute of shorter particular person journeys. They journey extra consciously however like to take action with extra consolation in enterprise class. 

“One other doable rationalization for the longer journeys is the ‘bleisure journey’ development, which means the mixture of a enterprise journey with a personal journey.”

One other distinction from 2019 has been within the reserving of sure locations exterior Europe by German enterprise travellers – China and Russia had been ranked because the second and third hottest intercontinental locations behind the US three years in the past. 

However whereas the US stays the primary vacation spot exterior Europe in 2022, India and Mexico have changed China and Russia within the high three. 

There was additionally a change in Europe with Spain taking on from the UK as the highest vacation spot for German travellers, because the UK slipped to second place.

“General, we observe a robust want amongst corporations to atone for all of the face-to-face encounters that might solely happen just about up to now two years,” added Wagner. 

“Due to the easing of the Covid restrictions, corporations now have extra planning certainty for his or her enterprise journeys once more. Reserving figures for the approaching months point out that the restoration in enterprise journey will proceed.”

AirPlus is a part of Lufthansa Group however the firm has announced that it is planning to sell the business.