MEETINGS AND CONVENTIONS | By Casey Britten
That business travel has changed dramatically over the past two years is perhaps the greatest understatement ever made. As the pandemic raged, in-person meetings and networking events all but disappeared from the world.
According to the U.S. Travel Association, prior to the pandemic business travel spending accounted for 26% of total travel spending. Direct business spending totaled $306 billion.
Conversely, at the end of 2021, business travel represented just 14% of overall travel spending, with direct business spending totaling $126 billion — 41% of 2019 levels. Furthermore, 1.9 million U.S jobs that were directly supported by business travel before the pandemic plummeted to just 500,000 jobs in 2021. At the end of 2021, 1.4 million of those jobs were still lost.
As the saying goes, however: That was then; this is now. As we head into the second half of 2022, business travel is starting to show signs of recovery. Officials from New North region convention and visitors’ bureaus and airports are encouraged.
Getting back to gatherings
“We’re seeing a significant increase in inquiries from convention planners,” says Brad Toll, president and CEO of Discover Green Bay. “They’re actively out looking for destinations now, where a year ago you couldn’t even get them on the phone.”
Pam Seidl, executive director of the Fox Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, explains that between sports tournaments and smaller group meetings, activity is ramping up in her part of the region as well.
“Gatherings like military reunions, religious retreats, rotary clubs and so on, those are more efficient to plan than conventions,” she says, “so organizers can be much nimbler.”
And while 2022 is still sluggish for larger conventions, the next three years show promise.
“Next year is looking better, and 2024 and 2025 are looking very strong for bookings,” Seidl says. “In the Fox Cities, we do a lot of state association gatherings, which operate on a rotating location schedule. At this point, it’s no longer about COVID; it’s about timing.”
Green Bay’s 125,000-square-foot Resch Expo, which opened for business during the pandemic, is now fully accessible and catching the attention of meeting planners. “Now that we can invite people in, it’s very popular. Planners absolutely love the building,” says Toll, adding that numerous events are planned or in the works.
And while business travel is on a slow path to recovery, the same cannot be said for leisure travel.
“Travel is back,” says Seidl, but it’s leisure travel that’s driving the recovery. “In the Fox Cities, we’re doing very well in leisure and sports tournaments. Before [the pandemic], mid-week business travel was a core of our hotel occupancy. That’s still not coming back, but leisure travel is making up for it. We’ve almost done a flip. Our weekends are very, very strong.”
On the fly
Airports tell a similar story. Both Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport (GRB) and Appleton International Airport (ATW) are setting travel records in 2022. “We are swamped,” says ATW Marketing Manager Patrick Tracey. “But it’s not because of meetings and conventions.”
GRB Marketing and Communications Manager Susan Levitte agrees. “Green Bay Airport and the entire airline industry have seen a strong rebound in traffic due to leisure demand,” she says. “Like other U.S. airports, we have seen a sharp V-shaped recovery.”
And corporate offices in the Green Bay area are starting to bring employees back to the office, Levitte adds, which translates to more traditional business passengers in the airport.
Overall, Levitte says there’s reasons for optimism coming from the airlines. “GRB leadership recently attended presentations from several airlines, and many have adjusted their full revenue recovery to 2023 versus 2024 or 2025,” she says. “GRB anticipates a return to the record-setting numbers of 2019 in the same timeframe. Today we hover just 6 to 8% below 2019 passenger numbers.”
In the meantime, while it’s difficult to pinpoint passengers’ primary reasons for traveling, Tracey says his team has garnered some assumptions that point toward a shift. “Pre-COVID, air travel at ATW was about 70% business and 30% leisure,” he says. “Today, I’d say it’s probably closer to 50-50.”
Both Tracey and Levitte also note an uptick in what’s known as “bleisure” travel — getting the most out of air travel by combining required business travel with a few days of sightseeing.
Has business travel fundamentally changed?
With the increase in adoption of cost-saving technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to hold meetings, is business travel dead?
It’s possible, some experts say, but it’s more likely that when people travel for business going forward, it will be to accomplish tasks that simply cannot be done virtually.
“There are real benefits to getting groups of people together in a room,” Seidl says. “How do you do a successful Zoom call with 250 people? With large gatherings, people benefit from the social time, that unplanned time for networking and exchanging information. I think when businesses travel now it’s going to be more meaningful and more long-term.”
“There are people out on the road, but now it’s different people,” Tracey adds. “It used to be the management-level executives or ‘road warrior’ salespeople. Now it seems like more of that hands-on, technical, skilled trade person out doing site visits.”
When people say business travel isn’t coming back, Toll is skeptical.
“I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I’ve heard that before. After 9/11 and during the economic downturn of 2008-2009 we were doing satellite video meetings, and that was going to be the new wave,” he says. “At some point, you realize that if you’re not meeting with your clients, someone else is. That face-to-face time, shaking hands, it makes a difference. It’s those relationships that matter.”
