Poll: Is your company cutting back on travel?
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Watching the stock market today hasn’t put me much in the mindset for some light-hearted after-hours travel blogging. But it’s got me thinking:
A few months ago, despite signs of a nasty downturn and increasingly negative economic forecasting, no one I knew was having their business travel curtailed. Personal travel was being cut back — hard — but not business travel.
I’m wondering — and asking you, the reader — if that’s changed in recent weeks. I had lunch with friends and former coworkers from my previous employer today, and they informed me that belt-tightening was in full effect. On the chopping block: travel. Conferences, conventions, and training were all getting cut.
If you’re seeing it at your own job, what’s taking the hit? Accommodation quality? Driving, flying, or both? Your flexibility in choosing carriers and providers? Travel, period?
Employees of Lehman, AIG, and Washington Mutual, I can guess what you’ll be saying…
Incidentally, cutbacks are a two-way street. In some instances, companies who have reduced their spend have been unable to keep their contracted rates.
Anyway, hit the poll, and tell your story in the comments. Is your travel being cut back? How? What’s the word?
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September 30th, 2008 at 8:31 am |
Goodbye Westin, hello FourPoints. Seriously.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:43 pm |
Working for an international company’s European headquarters in Holland — trainings that require travel abroad have been cut, and international travel that used to be seen as a key to upgrading the collective work are also severely cut back. However, this is only at the level of number of trips, distance and number of people, not at all in type of accommodation. We’ve always traveled in cattle class, even trans-continental, but there are no restrictions on ticket prices as long as we use the mandatory supplier, and no changes to the quite comfortable “up to 4 stars” hotel policy.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:19 pm |
Our clients aren’t cutting back on travel yet, but they’re definitely more price-sensitive.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:44 pm |
Being the stay at home dad, I can only comment about my wife’s travels.
The only difference that’s going on with her job is that instead of two weeks away, one week home, it’s now gotten to three weeks away, one week home. That might be due to where she’s working at currently, South Africa. It certainly wasn’t that way when she was working in Switzerland. Although it certainly is a longer flight. And she’s still flying business class.