Business class: The return of premium travel?

THE GLOBAL financial crisis left many companies scrambling to cut costs, and business travellers felt the pinch. Many firms stopped allowing employees to buy business-class and first-class airline tickets for short-haul flights. Some travel managers made economy class mandatory—or cancelled business travel entirely. For people who love a few more creature comforts on their flights (and who doesn't), it was a big change. But businesses are increasingly allowing their top travellers to return to the front of the plane, the Edmonton Journal reports:

• The number of North American companies that allow premium-class air travel rose five percentage points to 56 per cent in 2011 from a year ago, according to the Global Business Travel Association.

• European corporate travel managers are more optimistic. Despite gloomy economic indicators, 46 per cent of European travel managers surveyed by the association say they're approving premium-class airline travel to North America vs. 34 per cent last year at this time.
  
  
• That coincides with the most recent figures from the International Air Transport Association, which reported last week that travelling overseas in first or business-class seats rose 7.5 per cent in July compared with a year ago. That follows a climb of 6.4 per cent in June.

This is good news for everyone. Most airlines depend on premium-class travel to meet their earning targets. That big companies—even in increasingly shaky Europe—are feeling confident enough to pay for front-of-the-plane tickets is a sign that they may not think the economic situation is as fragile as it appears. We business travellers, of course, get wider seats, better food and drink, and maybe the chance to sleep on the way across the Atlantic.

Everybody wins! 

The Edmonton Journal article also notes that high-end hotels and conference destinations are doing better now that executives are less self-conscious about "ostentatious" travel. The unstated assumption is that the media is paying less attention to over-the-top business travel expenses and fancy retreats now that the American bank bailouts and the height of the financial crisis are several years in the past.

Business travel managers shouldn't get used to this: the next crisis is always closer than you think, and you never know when the press is going to decide to call attention to a particularly egregious splurge. Better to always know exactly how you would justify a trip to shareholders and the press before you book it.

http://www.economist.com