Tag: business travel

Business travel will have an important role to play as the global economy recovers from the massive knock-on effect of COVID-19. The US and the Eurozone experienced record-breaking declines of 32.9% and 40% in GDP, respectively, in the second quarter. And, although the extent of South Africa’s economic downturn has yet to be established with the official GDP figures only being released in a few weeks, we know the impact in our country has been severe.

You may owe SARS money next year if you receive a travel allowance and aren’t travelling for business because of COVID-19. Most employees have travelled less for business this year than they would in the pre-COVID-19 world.

In 2020, new vocabulary has seeped into global consciousness. From ‘new normal’ to the more practical yet equally disliked ‘social distancing’, the additions to this year’s dictionary paint a bleak, dystopian picture. But in the last few weeks, fresh terms are being met with interest from wanderlust-stricken travellers and cautious optimism from governments and businesses hoping to rebound from the economic damage of COVID-19.

After more than two months of hard lockdown, corporate travellers have been itching to get back to the boardroom. With Level 3 regulations implemented on June 1, a number of businesses were able to resume operations while business travellers could – to some extent – take to the skies again.

The President’s address on the evening of 15 March 2020 sets out a range of measures that have been and will have to be taken in respect of COVID-19. Specifically, under the banner of the Disaster Management Act he proclaimed a national state of disaster (Section 27).

If you’ve ever felt stressed or anxious about business travels, know that you are not alone. In fact, experts have come up with a new term to describe this very common phenomenon. It’s called 'Permanxiety'. Coined in 2017 by global travel industry platform Skift, permanxiety refers to a permanent state of anxiety widely experienced across the world.

With economic growth considered the main driver of corporate travel, emerging economies such as South Africa are increasingly adding to the international pool of business travellers. Predicting positive growth in 2020, analysts say there is good news for South African SMEs, whose bargaining power they see rising with the market’s size and spend.

Under tough economic conditions, the travel sector performed well in 2017, with 6.2% growth in turnover from 2016, according to a Travel Market Index study commissioned by the Association of Southern African Travel Agents (ASATA), which represents over 95% of South Africa’s travel sector.

With the rise in digital nomads and travelpreneurs, it’s business as usual, whether you’re sitting at your desk, or 30 000 feet up in the air. Business no longer keeps office hours and if you’re a business owner or director, chances are you’re conducting business in a noisy coffee shop or in the waiting lounge of an airport.

These days there’s an app for just about everything. From everyday apps to help you get around, like Uber and Google Maps, to the more bespoke and sometimes bizarre ones like Carr Matey to locate your car in a pirate voice, which just about says it all. The total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 was around 197 billion, according to Statista.