By Phil Denman, CEO of MGA Capacity Insights.
The corporate travel industry has recovered from the pandemic years – and then some. The latest GBTA forecast indicates that corporate travel spending should return to its pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. And over the next few years, global business travel spending is forecast to grow to nearly $1.8 trillion.
The GBTA largely attributes this recovery to the return of in-person meetings. During the pandemic, many employees around the world did all of their communications digitally. Some called this “the new normal,” and predicted that never again would people travel across the world to conduct a meeting that could easily take place on Zoom.
However, there’s simply no substitute to meeting clients and prospects face-to-face. With fewer restrictions on international travel, businesses are returning to their pre-pandemic way of running, and the corporate travel industry is booming as a result.
But what does the future hold for business travel, and for corporate travel insurance providers? What current trends will shape the way the industry evolves in the coming years, and what sort of challenges will insurers need to contend with?
Business + Leisure = Bleisure
The latest generation of employees are increasingly combining their business trips with certain leisure activities. For example, they might fly to a foreign city for a meeting, but then stick around for a few days after the meeting for a weekend getaway.
The combination of business and leisure travel has even gained its own portmanteau: “bleisure”. As a result of this increasingly popular trend, corporate travel insurance providers have started to offer more flexible cover arrangements. Rather than taking out separate travel insurance policies to cover their business and their leisure travel, some providers now offer bespoke insurance to cover both forms of travel in a single policy.
Technology and AI
Flexible “bleisure” cover is a form of “embedded insurance,” another defining trend in the world of corporate travel insurance. Essentially, it means that insurers are making use of technologies to allow customers to purchase multiple forms of cover in one transaction.
This isn’t the only way corporate travel insurance providers are looking to technology to improve customer experiences. The business travel insurance industry could leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and generative learning platforms to provide customers with a sort of virtual personal assistant.
An AI could act as a digital travel agent who could research and recommend hotels based on a customer’s preferences, while automatically planning itineraries to make the trip as streamlined and stress-free as possible.
Sustainability and Wellness
Many employees are concerned about the environmental impact of their business travel. Corporate travel insurance providers will need to look for ways to allow business travellers to make their trips more sustainable. This could be through using apps and online booking systems to make travel as paperless as possible, or through providing cover for more sustainable hotels, or less carbon-intensive transport options.
Health and wellbeing are some further key concerns for the modern business traveller. Corporate travel insurance providers can help travellers prioritise their wellness with flexible cover – not just for health expenses and medical emergencies, but also for the sort of leisure activities that could support a traveller’s mental wellbeing. After all, why shouldn’t a corporate travel insurance policy provide cover for massages, spa experiences, and other wellness activities?
It’s Not All Smooth Sailing From Here
While the latest GBTA report is largely optimistic, it does advise caution that certain factors might temper the industry’s growth in the coming years. Travel insurance providers should keep tabs on global unrest and unpredictable financial markets. It’s also worth remembering that most of the current growth can be attributed to a handful of sectors, while other sectors may be affected by persistently high inflation for years to come.
But if anything’s going to help corporate travel insurance providers manage these challenges, it’s flexibility. To survive and thrive in the coming years, insurers should look to diversify their product lines, and investigate how technology and embedded insurance models can help them meet and exceed changing customer expectations.
