Meetings, incentives, conferencing and exhibitions travel was one of the first types of tourism to be affected by the global spread of COVID-19 and it could be one of the last to fully return, according to data and analytics company GlobalData.
The firm projects international business arrivals to fall 35.3 percent in 2020 alone—and even the end of the pandemic may not bring business travel to its pre-COVID numbers.
“MICE events are now taking place online, without the need for companies operating in the tourism sector,” Ralph Hollister, travel & tourism analyst at GlobalData, said. “This is a worrying trend for all industries involved in travel and tourism—the longer restrictions and guidelines last around MICE tourism, while other national economies start to pick up, the more companies, attendees and event organizers may start to become accustomed to hosting and attending MICE events online, whilst appreciating the unseen benefits they bring.”
Companies in all sectors will be looking for ways to reduce costs in the coming years as they reel from the economic impact created by COVID-19. Business travel is a costly expense for all companies, and with the rise of video conferencing software such as Zoom and Google Meet, many will realize that this type of ongoing expense is unnecessary.
“As well as the potential of MICE trips now being seen as an unnecessary financial burden, business travelers themselves may not be keen to undertake the frequent and often stressful trips they were performing pre-pandemic,” Hollister said. “The ongoing danger of contracting the virus at a MICE event paired with the fact that business travelers can now achieve the same objectives and goals of a conference in the comfort of their own home, means that demand for many MICE events is likely to fall.
“Although it’s likely that meeting and conference tourism demand may never fully recover, exhibitions and trade fairs, on the other hand, are much more effective when they take place face-to-face due to attendee motivations around networking and assessing and experiencing products and services in person. However, due to the mass gatherings of people that these kind of events encourage, it is unclear when it will be safe and secure to start holding these events once again.”
Other industry insiders are more optimistic about the future of business travel, however. According to hotel revenue software company Duetto, hotel reservations for the second half of 2021 in North America are already “strongly ahead” of the same time last year, which the company credits to groups rebooking their hotel blocks from earlier in the outbreak. As such, the company suggests 2021 could be a year of industry recovery.