Businesses take to the skies following border reopenings

Thousands of businesses have returned to the skies since domestic and international borders reopened in Australia, highlighting how important in-person interaction is.

Flight Centre Corporate has revealed that more than 1,300 businesses have returned to the skies since domestic and international borders reopened in Australia.

Innovative internal data shows the service industry leading the return to corporate travel with 238 businesses taking to the skies. These were followed by construction and information technology, with manufacturing and arts/entertainment/recreation rounding out the top five bouncing back.

“There’s no doubt confidence has rapidly returned in the corporate travel world since the reopening of domestic and international borders as business travellers and organisations shed the fear of more lockdowns and restrictions being imposed,” Flight Centre Corporate managing director Australia James Kavanagh said.

“When we dig into the numbers, it’s quite eye-opening. We now have 79 per cent of our pre-COVID business travellers flying again – that’s an increase of 21 per cent since the barriers came down.

“To put that into context, we now have almost 6,500 customers flying with us across our corporate divisions again – it’s fair to say Australia is very much open for business once again.

“We know organisations are desperate to build back better and the key to that is staff retention and hiring new talent to take those strides forward – travel is imperative to this.

“Face-to-face interactions with current employees and the ability to pitch for new customers in a personal environment is something we have heard a lot from our customers – and that translates across large businesses with FCM and small-to-medium-sized enterprises with Corporate Traveller.”

Tribal Group is one of those businesses that has returned to the skies since the lifting of domestic and international borders and APAC managing director Peter Croft said their success as a company came from the relationships they had with their customers.

“That’s how we understand them best, and how we deliver the greatest value,” Croft said.

“The last two years of remote communications have highlighted just how important in-person interaction is to nurturing relationships, so we’re very excited to be working again with Corporate Traveller to get us back on the road and in the air.”