KPMG and FCM Travel Solutions released a white paper on “Corporate Travel in India – Emerging Trends and Opportunities”. The report predicts that the corporate travel spending in India will rise by 12% YoY in next 5 years. The paper clearly tells where and how corporate travelers in India are spending. In the report, there is an interesting insight around trends in air travel spending in the top 15 countries over a time of 5 years. Let’s take a look at some key insights from the white paper:
India: Next big player in corporate travel
India is presently a USD 30 billion corporate travel market and is projected to more than triple to USD 93 billion by 2030. IT and Pharmaceutical companies alone contributed to 60% of the total travel spend in 2017 by all the industries. India saw a 15% extension in corporate travel spending, which will develop by a CAGR of 12% through 2020 to 6% by 2030. This will most likely will be more than the business travel growth in the following 3 countries in the list put together including Italy, Brazil, and South Korea. By 2030, India will likely be amongst the top 5 in corporate travel spending.
Technology: Disrupting the market
Corporate traveler in India expects information to be at fingertips anytime and anywhere, using social media and mobile technology to connect with colleagues and clients. The paper shows a drastic 300% upsurge in smartphone utilization from INR 34 billion worth of transactions in 2009 to INR 109 billion in 2014. The usage of smartphone growing at 12% from 2014 to 2015. With nearly 25% of phone users in India owning a smartphone/tablet, the utilization of these devices to oversee travel needs including goal research and booking administration is expected to increase over time. We also have our extra value air travel savings tool TrackMyTkt which leverages technology to dynamically track flight prices in real time from the time of booking until the departure and help corporates re-book the tickets when viable savings are identified on the same or similar flight as per the requirement.
Corporate traveler: Shift in behavior
As travel choices clearly shift from corporate-travel work areas into the control of individual travelers, organizations must change to their behavior in a similar manner. Corporates currently wish to offer their workers greater adaptability in dealing with their travel needs. Subsequently, employees can embrace smartphone for search and booking and will never again need to go to a fixed web area to deal with their travel.
As it turns out, Asia has turned into the world’s biggest corporate travel market. Going by the current trend, corporate travel spending in India will have trebled from the present levels by 2030. What remains to be seen is how the ever-changing behavior of consumers and suppliers responds to this dynamic demand-supply in a real market scenario.
