While post-pandemic business travel is likely to change, the death of the sector has been greatly exaggerated, according to a new travel trends survey conducted by American Express and American Express Global Business Travel (GBT).

The “Back to Blue Skies” corporate report, released last week, concludes that a new hybrid system of virtual meetings and in-person events is likely to evolve, but, importantly, finds eight out of 10 business travellers and planners believe that the benefits of the latter outweigh the convenience of virtual participation.

Conducted across a wide sampling of US businesses in April, the report also states that a majority of participants believe that more remote work will also lead to more business travel.

The Blue Skies report states that 78% of the close to 1,500 participants acknowledge that their organization’s business travel policies will be different than they were pre-pandemic, including a greater focus on health and safety, but that 83% of decision-makers are optimistic that business travel will return to previous levels over the next two years.

Key insights from the report include:

• 86% of business travellers said when it becomes safe, they are looking forward to getting back on the road.

• 69% of decision makers believe increased remote work will lead to more business travel in the future.

• More than four in five decision makers said that business travel leads to higher profit (85%) and revenue (85%).

• 85% say when they’re exploring new job opportunities, the ability to travel for work is important. They cite business travel playing a valuable role in their professional development, helping them perform better at their job (82%), and giving them more job fulfillment (83%). 90% of decision makers agree that business travel helps advance employees’ professional growth.

• 88% said that business travel broadens cultural understanding.

• 87% of decision makers cite business travel as a way to reinvigorate employee engagement.

• Decision makers overwhelmingly agreed that business travel is important to attract (84%) and retain (83%) top talent.

Additional key findings include:

• The workforce is yearning for in-person business connections after an extended period of remote work and monotony.

• Four in five prefer in-person brainstorms and collaborative meetings over virtual ones (79%), as well as in-person sales meetings over virtual ones (78%).

• Although the increased use of videoconferencing technologies has enabled connections over the past year, six in 10 believe creating valuable business relationships with others has been more difficult over the last year.

• The top challenges for creating new business relationships virtually include assessing professional chemistry, (56%), gauging real-time response (52%) and lacking informal interactions with potential partners (57%).

“We’ve heard from our clients… that in-person connections cannot be replicated,” said Gunther Bright, EVP at American Express. “While some meetings are easily done virtually, others are much more valuable when they take place face-to-face. We expect many organizations will take a hybrid approach to doing business in the future.”

GBT EVP David Reimer added, “Decision makers are ready to get their employees back to blue skies safely and are optimistic that while business travel patterns might shift with a more dispersed workforce, volumes will return.”