At this year's PhoCusWright conference, a variety of CEOs spoke about their companies, but one stood out for detailing how declining business travel has impacted his company's profits.
According to Wyndham Worldwide president and CEO Stephen Holmes, "Where we see the biggest overall weakness in the market is business travel. With cash as king discretionary spending is under scrutiny in all businesses." To add to the gloom, he said meetings were spiraling down (with the exception of association bookings) as well as corporate room nights.
"We think this is largely because in the case of corporate meetings, it's an expense item and in the case of association, it's a key source of revenue. Big urban hotels that rely heavily on corporate travelers and meetings will need to be more creative to drive business in the days ahead," he continued.
Even Wyndham itself has dumped in-person meetings. Holmes said Wyndham would be hosting a Web cast rather than an in-person meeting for its annual investor day next month, and noted that everyone is "being asked to do more with less time and less money."
Lastly, Holmes said that while the decline in business travel is "largely due to the economy, the unfriendly skies are also contributing to a decline in business travel in particular." He cited the Travel Industry Association's determination that travel hassles, long security lines, flight delays and cancellations caused 41 million trips not to be taken last year, resulting in the loss of about 12 million business trips and a loss of $5.6 billion for hotels.