Millennial impact: CTM Global Survey reveals a shift in business travel preferences

Young professionals drive demand for personalized business travel experiences, emphasizing productivity, sustainability and work-life balance, according to the 2024 CTM Global Customer Survey.

With younger generations becoming the dominant population of organizations worldwide, there’s a noticeable shift in attitudes towards work and travel preferences^[1].

Anticipated to represent 75% of the global workforce by 2025, millennials are driving significant changes in business travel trends and expectations. They seek purpose-driven work experiences that align with their values and prioritize work-life balance.

A recent 2024 CTM Global Customer Survey unveils intriguing insights: Respondents under 40 years old are seeking more personal benefits from their business travels than the over-40 cohort, placing a higher value on experiencing new destinations and earning loyalty points from their business trips.

Additionally, the under-40s are exhibiting a notable appetite to travel more for customer meetings (32%), multi-destination business trips (28%), and domestic business trips (33%) in the year ahead compared to their 40+ peers.

The under-40 demographic also placed 10% higher value on pre-packaged and personalized business travel offers, and were more inclined to seek environmentally sustainable airlines, hotels and car rental suppliers.

The rise of remote and work-from-anywhere workforces may be fueling this shift, by enabling professionals to more seamlessly blend business and leisure experiences while working. Notably, the under-40 cohort showcases a stronger tendency for bleisure travel (leisure extensions to business trips), demonstrating a multifaceted approach to travel.

These evolving preferences reflect a deep-rooted desire for more personalized, sustainable travel experiences that harmonize professional obligations with personal aspirations. Recognizing these generational nuances is increasingly important in crafting an effective travel program that caters to the diverse needs of today’s travelling workforce.

How to design a travel program that resonates with a diverse workforce

The first step to designing an effective travel program that meets the needs of a diverse workforce lies in establishing a well-balanced stakeholder group including Procurement, Finance, HR, Legal, ESG and the Travel Program Manager. Having a diverse range of stakeholders will be important in designing an effective employee-led travel policy that meets the needs of a diverse workforce; ultimately supporting program compliance, employee engagement and traveler satisfaction.

The second step is to lean on surveys, feedback loops, and HR’s knowledge of employees’ needs to gather essential information and insights. This will help identify your employees’ unique travel needs and preferences. It is important to address areas such as diversity and inclusion, accessibility, health, safety and wellbeing.

The third step is to engage your TMC to support your business insights and employee sentiment. By combining travel booking data and reporting insights with knowledge gathered through step 2, you can work with your TMC to deliver an inclusive travel program. The program should encourage employee engagement and be complemented by a travel policy that ensures compliance and traveler satisfaction.

Choosing the right TMC

TMCs play an integral role in designing, delivering and refining your travel program, services and solutions in alignment with your company’s objectives and employees’ needs. Your TMC should provide guidance around evolving risk, supplier/vendor products and content sources (balancing policy and traveler expectations), 24/7 service support, and an integrated, multi-channel technology and service ecosystem.

Source:
^{[1] –} 2024 CTM Global Customer Survey