“Before Corona, sustainability played an important role for almost 90 percent of business travelers. After Corona, one in three business travelers still sees its increasing importance.” Results of the study “Chefsache Business Travel 2020”
Safety first, Green second – this is how the current sequence for business travellers in Germany can be described. At the beginning of 2020, and thus before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic in Europe, 91 percent of business travelers were still “important” to “very important” to make sure that their travel arrangements were environmentally friendly. In May 2020, on the other hand, more than half felt that sustainability would be less important when traveling in the future. As many as 36 percent are convinced that the importance will increase and 11 percent believe that nothing will change. These are the findings of the study “Chefsache Business Travel 2020”, an initiative of Travel Management Companies in the German Travel Association (DRV).
Stay green instead of driving
When it comes to sustainable business travel, business travellers want to improve their carbon footprint primarily by staying in environmentally friendly accommodations. 36 percent of those surveyed have at least set themselves this goal. And 33 percent are planning to pay an ecological surcharge for climate protection projects in the future. In contrast, 26 percent want to place significantly less emphasis on climate-friendly travel by bus and train in the future due to a greater need for security. And 28 percent state that they intend to use public transport less frequently in future instead of a cab.
“Business travellers do not want to run the risk of infection while on the move and are therefore relying more heavily on individual transportation than before the pandemic,” explains Florian Storp, Chairman of the Business Travel Committee of the DRV, and advocates including climate-friendly transfer criteria in corporate travel policies.
And the companies themselves?
Prior to Corona, two out of three companies “always” or at least “mostly” attached importance to the sustainability of the travel connection, or in just under 90 percent of the companies “always” or “mostly” paid attention to sustainability. Nevertheless, 95 percent of those surveyed booked at least some of their travel themselves, which makes it all the more important to have appropriate travel policies in place.
Photo: © iStock.com/Nikolai Sermiagin
