Group travel is returning.

After the COVID pandemic, group travel—that is, travel involving ten or more people—has been rapidly rebounding. Between January and June 2023, 12 million more group hotel room nights were booked globally than over the same period in 2022, according to Amadeus, an increase of 18%1. This development is anticipated to continue as remote working has become widely established and more organisations are encouraging group travel as a means of boosting employee connectedness, internal cooperation and customer impact.

The post-pandemic needs of group travel have changed.

Five emergent requirements stand out:

  • Group travel needs to be more economical. With airfares as high as they have been in a decade, according to OAG, the airline data firm, organisations are prioritising cost-effective group travel arrangements due to the large number of travellers involved.
  • Organisations are demanding from their travel arrangers a higher level of agility and enhanced risk management. Since the pandemic, we have lived through a more volatile and disruptive travel environment where conditions change rapidly often due to exogeneous shocks such as geopolitical developments, industrial action, natural disasters, and extreme weather events. Group trip organisers must therefore be more agile in quote handling, be prepared to respond quickly to changed circumstances and ensure as much flexibility as possible in airline and venue arrangements. Higher volatility also translates into higher travel risk and organisations expect a more pronounced focus by travel management companies on duty of care support and risk mitigation.
  • There is a heightened emphasis on sustainability. Given rising climate change concerns, corporates increasingly expect hard evidence of eco-friendly group travel arrangements especially as conferences and events typically have large environmental footprints.
  • There is a stronger focus on traveller wellness. Since the pandemic, group travel has become more complex and, as a result, there is a higher likelihood of physical and emotional friction. Organisations are consequently prioritising mental and physical health for their group event attendees to enable them to maintain their wellness practices on the road.
  • There is a growing desire for inclusiveness. Increasingly, meetings and events are attended both physically and virtually. Venues therefore need a robust technology infrastructure to maximize the experience for both in-person and virtual attendees. Virtual attendees need not only to have access to presentation material but also to feel included.

What is Key Travel doing on the group travel front?

Key Travel is an international travel management company that is exclusively dedicated to reducing the cost, complexity, risk, and carbon-impact of travel for non-profit organisations so that they can deploy more of their resources on delivering their missions. Key Travel currently arranges travel for over 1000 groups annually with an average group size of 30 travellers. We have recently relaunched our groups offering as Groups-2-Go. This involves:

  • Assigning a trip or event organiser to your event who will handle the group booking end-to-end, with guaranteed rapid response times to queries.
  • Trip planning consultations with clear process definition, lead-times and milestones.
  • Exclusive specialist air and hotel fares with enhanced conditions and discounts which are not available publicly but which we have uniquely negotiated for non-profit customers.
  • Expert venue selection which includes venues with eco-friendly credentials and wellness facilities as well the technical infrastructure to be inclusive of virtual attendees.
  • Full event support services with a focus on the delegate experience as a core success metric.
  • Carbon offsetting of flights and hotel rooms through our partnership with Cool Effect, one of the leading carbon reduction NGOs with triple-verified, gold-standard projects worldwide.
  • Close engagement and regular reviews with our suppliers, ensuring we offer the best products and services and always looking to enhance our global product offering.

Conclusion

While group travel is recovering since the pandemic, its nature is changing. There is a growing demand for more cost-friendly arrangements which are also flexible, environmentally sensitive, wellness-oriented and inclusive of virtual attendees. Key Travel is the world’s leading travel management company focused on non-profit organisations. It has relaunched its group travel arm to accommodate customers’ changing requirements with its Groups-2-Go offering.


1 https://hospitalitytech.com/group-travel-revival-trends-2023-and-beyond