Over the past several weeks, I have noticed that a significant number of our clients have or are about to put a freeze on non-essential business Travel. It almost feels like the early days of the pandemic, but the reasons are very different. Back then, it was a health issue, today’s travel freezes are to save on travel expenses and decreased productivity.
In 2023, there are several categories of business travel including internal meetings at headquarters, customer meetings, training programs, product launches, recruitment and hiring, and HR-related meetings such as the retirement of a valued employee.
From a purely business acumen perspective, let’s take a look at the travel costs of 3 unique scenarios. The costs are standard averages:
Travel to Headquarters
- Flight - $700
- Hotel (2 nights) - $600
- Food – 2 days - $200
- Miscellaneous - $100
Total - $1600
This expense doesn't include travel time which is non-productive
Typical Sales Meeting (big customer out of town)
- Flight - $700
- Hotel (2 nights) - $600
- Food – 2 days - $500
- Miscellaneous - $200
Total - $2,000
This expense doesn't include travel time which is non-productive
Typical Training Event
- Flight - $800
- Hotel (3 nights) - $900
- Food – 3 days - $600
- Miscellaneous - $300
Total - $2,800
This expense doesn't include travel time which is non-productive
Continuing with the math, think about these assumptions of a “typical” 40,000-person organization:
- 4,000 people travel each month at an average expense of $1,800 = $7,200,000 a month
- Annualized, that is equal to about $86,000,000
That’s right, conservatively, a typical large organization can save over $86,000,000 just for travel, lodging, and miscellaneous expenses.
