With more and more people getting vaccinated and countries slowly easing restrictions on their borders, workers around the world are eager to get back on the road and resume their business trips. This revelation comes from recent research by SAP Concur which also mentions that the current travel hiatus is hurting careers in general by impeding both business goals and personal lives.
According to the research, professionals from Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand are all looking forward to be able to travel again. As much as 95 percent of survey respondents are “willing” to travel in the next 12 months, including 63 percent who are “very willing” to do so. These professional hope to also begin in-person meetings once more. However, they are also hoping for greater control over how they travel in order to ensure their health and safety are not compromised – considering the threat of Covid-19 is still very real.
“Covid-19 has upended business travel in the past year and a half. Yet, it has also reaffirmed business travel’s importance in forging business and personal connections, and enabling career advancement,” said Dr Carl Jones, Vice President and Head of Strategy for SAP Concur Asia Pacific.
On the business front, APAC respondents fret that if their organization does not increase business travel in the year, it will be harder to sign new deals (40 percent), build new relationships (39 percent), and renew contracts with existing clients (39 percent).
In fact, 9 percent are afraid their business will shut down, and 14 percent worry that they will lose their jobs. For those who are very frequent travelers, this latter figure jumps to 22 percent. These grave concerns reveal respondents’ perceptions that business travel is a vital vehicle to strengthen business relationships for career success and experience new places to broaden personal horizons.
