The State of Corporate Travel and Expense 2022 3 SKIFT + TRIPACTIONS The 2021 edition of Skift’s and TripActions’ annual forward-looking review of the corporate travel and spend management examined the rethinking underway about how the sector would emerge f rom the impacts of Covid-19. At that time, the future shape of off ice and work culture, travel policies, safety, and the overall reorientation of business travel planning and programming in the post-pandemic environment was still uncertain. One year later, corporate travel and spend is recovering at a marked clip, and our data reinforces that. There are plenty of reasons for uncertainty, but there are also plenty of reasons to look forward to 2022. One area of evolution is with the products and services offered by corporate travel and spend platforms, which must continue to adapt to meet the changing needs of corporate travelers. As Skift explored in a June 2021 article, that may well mean restructuring and even refinancing to gain a competitive edge for recovery . Another key area of interest is how quickly business travel will fully return. U.S. domestic travel made a dramatic rebound this summer, with travelers surging back to major urban centers that they had avoided during the height of the pandemic. Comparative data f rom TripActions f inds that summer volume was up across the board in 20 major U.S. cities, led by Las Vegas and New York City, up 519 percent and 471 percent, respectively, over summer 2020. Assuming this trend continues, domestic travel is on track to reach pre-pandemic levels as early as 2022. While lagging behind the leisure segment, business travel is projected to catch up at a similar pace. “We have a pretty aggressive outlook on business travel recovery that is concretely supported by our booking data,” said Ciara Govern, chief customer EXECUTIVE SUMMARY off icer at TripActions. “At 5 to 10 percent growth week-over-week, we are already approaching pre- Covid booking levels. That is 100 percent reality — and I am confident that we are on course to meet and exceed those levels by early 2022.” At the same time, companies are bringing employees back to the office — and even, in industries such as banking and finance, requiring their return — while other sectors are navigating a future of remote work and team travel. And in bellwether destinations like Las Vegas, large-scale meetings, conventions, and live events are surging anew. As the Wall Street Journal wrote in July, “ The Las Vegas Business Trip is Back (Mostly) .” How these developments will impact business travel has yet to be determined. However, early data f rom the industry suggests that remote work’s impact on employee trips is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Some business travel may decline, while other new forms of work trips, like offsites and team meetups, may increase in f requency. This latest report f rom Skift and TripActions incorporates survey-based feedback f rom more than 1,100 global finance and corporate travel and spend managers, as well as 500-plus business travelers, with insights from industry leaders. And it finds a generally improved outlook over last year aligned with the developments noted above. Of course, the environment remains dynamic, as markets and economies conf ront the spread of the Delta strain and other coronavirus variants across the U.S. and abroad. The lack of universal access to vaccines, compounded by a patchwork of divergent governmental policies and travel limits, also present near-term challenges for a globalized recovery.