The world’s financial systems have been rocked by the pandemic. Global trade and international business relies on constant communications. And while Zoom and MS Teams have helped keep the global supply chain humming, in-person meetings are critical to maintaining relationships and growing businesses. The world needs corporate face-to-face meetings and that is why business travel will kickstart the global economy.

To get a better idea of when corporate travel will resume in earnest we turned to the most recent member survey of the Global Business Travel Associations (GBTA). It shows that people are anxious to get back on the road for business, and yet hesitant until vaccinations roll out more thoroughly.

For larger countries like the United States and Canada, or China and blocks such as the EU, most corporate travel planners expect business travel to resume domestically first. This mask sense for a whole range of safety, familiarity, comfort, security and liability issues.

Despite some optimism, Travel Mangers project that employees ae about as willing to travel for business now as they were ion November of last year.

One of the issues impacting travel readiness is assurances that other travellers have been vaccinated and therefore are less likely to spread COVID-19 asymptotically. To that end, a consensus is emerging for some form of digital health verification system.

The bottom line is that most respondents feel that business travel will be safe after they receive the vaccine. This is obviously an important factor in getting the industry back up and running.

This survey shows that people want to get back on the road for business but with a few caveats. The most important factor for them is having been vaccinated. This means international travel will definitely lag domestic travel for most people in the year ahead.