Simple meetings moves from niche to mainstream

Pre-Covid according to GBTA research only 85% of corporate business travel managers had a platform in place to handle simple meetings and team off-site reservations. It was basically a completely unmanaged category in business travel. This was gradually changing but now we are seeing a rapid acceleration towards a self-serve digital first solution to take control of this unmanaged space.

But whats driving this change?

Duty of care

Companies can no longer allow employees to book external spaces in an ad hoc or unmanaged way. Employee safety and well being are now more important than ever. A centralised platform with easy self-serve booking capability helps employees book spaces in policy but also allows the organisation to ensure they know where their teams are located at any given time.

Remote working

Most organisations are now reviewing their office requirements as remote working has become the norm. A highly distributed workforce opens a complete new set of use cases for simple meetings and group stays. Employees can now increasingly leave bigger cities and settle in secondary locations, this is already impacting how teams connect and meet.

I recently took part in a panel discussion at the SKIFT Business Travel and Future of Work Summit. I was joined by Nina Herold from TripActions and Suzanne Neufang CEO GBTA. TripActions has raised nearly $500 million at a $5 billion valuation to distribute the corporate travel market. They are now turning their attention to simple meetings due to the global shift towards remote working.

“Corporate travel in the past was typically split between the business-transient and meetings and events sectors. But there is now the expectation of a new third type of corporate travel emerging as a result of the pandemic: a distributed workforce that doesn’t work in a main office but still meets on a regular cadence, Herold told Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali.” Read article

Whats next?

We are already seeing a sharp increase in client acquisition, this year we will increase our corporate client base by +500%. But, whats really interesting is that over half of these new clients are coming from the real estate team first who then at a later stage bring their business travel colleagues into the discussions.

Are real estate and business travel converging? It looks like it. Again, the main driver for this change is remote working. Where people work sits in real estate and where people meet and how they get there is owned by business travel.

Thanks again to the amazing team at SKIFT for inviting us to take part and share our experience of this rapidly evolving space.