Article for February 2nd, 2011

Here I am again with a new interesting article. Well I actually found it interesting because the article is about business travel trends for 2011. Several weeks ago, there was an article about booking trends for 2011 and I am glad that there is now an article for the business trends because business travelers are a big part of our customers. In the hotels where i followed an intersnhip, the biggest part of their customers were business travellers.
And because they are a big part of the market, it is interesting to look at the evolution over the years. This year, they wrote a survey that they give to more than 600 business travellers. Now what are the top three trends for 2011?

1) Hotel accommodation
The survey checked out what were the preferences about hotel location for the business travellers. The response was that 83.% prefers a hotel near the location of business meeting; 54% prefers hotels where they can earn guest points and 31% prefers hotels where WIFI is included in the price

2)  Business /Leisure
In the survey, there was also a question about whether or not business travellers combine their trip with leisure. Almost 70% anwsered yes, this meaning that quite often a businessman takes his family with him in order to on one hand focuss on the meetings and on the other hand be free to spend time with their family

3) Last minute flight changes
The travel leaders experts were asked during the survey if whether or not last minute flight changes happened often. 60% responded that it still happened that flights had to be changed or cancelled. 34% answered that this happened only when it was necessary and extremely urgent. 5% said it happened almost never.

Comment:

To conclude this article, I think that it is quite a good initiative to make up surveys to analyze the trends for the new  years because in that way we know better our market and we can prepare ourselves to anticipate in case it is necessary.
This is also so important because in the hotel industry, most hotels that are established in great cities depend on business travellers. They depend on the behaviour of the business travellers. It is important to know how your clients will react and what they prefer in order to adapt our management and attract more clients and in consequence higher our revenue.