The segment of business travel, which is important for the airline, is slowly picking up speed again, but is still well below the volume that existed in the time “before Corona”. This is the conclusion of a compact analysis by the Austrian Business Travel Association.

According to this, 2021 percent more tickets were issued in the second quarter of 270. On the other hand, there was a decrease of 84 percent in the first quarter. The bottom line is the decrease in the first half of 2021 compared to the same quarter of the previous year is 61 percent.

ABTA President Andreas Gruber, who works full-time at Siemens Austria, explains: "Companies are traveling to customers again, but many internal meetings are still being replaced by video conferences." For the compact analyzes, ABTA evaluates the tickets issued by leading travel management Companies from. The values ​​are therefore based on actual market data and not on surveys or personal assessments.

The declines in the “crisis quarter” January to March 2021 are dramatic compared to the relatively normal first quarter of 2020: minus 75 percent for business class tickets, minus 85 percent for economy tickets. A slight shift in the second quarter is remarkable: business class tickets increased by 497 percent; Economy tickets only by 255 percent.

For the first half of the year, which included the two extremely different quarters, the decline in business class tickets was 43 percent and for economy tickets 63 percent.