Happy new year or is it? The word happy seems a bit hollow in a world where a new wave of Covid is killing thousands every day across the world, countries have been slapped into lockdown and the ability to leave our homes, let alone our countries, has been restricted. And that’s without mentioning what certain politicians and protestors have been up to this week.
Yet despite the gloom there is hope – accelerating vaccination programmes should help us get back to normal in 2021.
While all but the most essential travel has been stopped, that does not mean the business travel sector has stopped working – far from it.
Right now, everyone is having conversations with key partners and stakeholders about how things will be when all this is over.
This week's podcast is hosted by BTN Europe digital editor Mark Frary, with Daniel Tallos, travel manager EMEA at Nike, Karen Hutchings, global head of travel, meetings and events for EY, Dave Bishop, CCO at Gray Dawes Group, and Pascal Jungfer, CEO and founding partner of Areka Consulting.
In the podcast, we learn there is an appetite for private as opposed to shared travel solutions and that corporates are talking about resizing their travel teams. Business travel may not return until people return to the office, although there are certain sectors are still buoyant, such as marine.
There are also increasing conversations between rivals and there is a hope that that will continue after the pandemic.
We also heard that TMCs and their clients are increasingly looking at pricing. Many companies are also looking at the supply chain in much more detail – some are taking suppliers off their programmes.