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Financial Crisis Ices Corporate Travel.

Article Excerpt
Fueled by a financial crisis that continued to broaden this month, many companies have enacted further plans to cut trips and draw down travel budgets. As some travel buyers instituted across-the-board travel freezes or flying reductions, others have further tightened the screws on policy and ramped up enforcements to shave costs.

A Business Travel Coalition survey of 196 corporate travel buyers conducted this month showed nearly 26 percent of the respondents "implemented emergency travel cutbacks in the past weeks as a direct result of the financial crisis." Of the respondents indicating newly implemented cuts, 34 percent characterized the cutbacks as "straight-up travel freezes," while 19 percent said they took the form of mandates to reduce the number of trips.

BTC chairman Kevin Mitchell said the majority of those respondents plan to "keep emergency travel cutbacks in place until 'further notice,' underscoring the great uncertainty about the economy."

Mitchell said developments on corporate travel cuts continued in "real time" as he began to field the survey on Oct. 15. In one example, he said a travel buyer who noted "no executive mandate to decrease travel" replied within 24 hours to say, "As of a few minutes ago, there is a mandate to curtail travel, so I...

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