Concur has studied its booking and expense data to come up with a few takeaways on business travel behaviour.
There's lots of data around hotel, air and ground transportation spend as well as a look at some more recent behaviour.
For example, there has been significant growth in usage of sharing economy-type accommodation according to the State of Business Travel study - a 56% growth in usage between the first quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016. Some may remember that Concur was one of the first to ink a deal with Airbnb this time two years ago.
The report also reveals that business travellers stay about five nights when using a home compared with three nights when staying in a hotel.
Further findings in the study show that while mobile usage is growing, desktop web is still important. As you might expect, 'Savvy Travelers' taking up to 30 trips a year have high mobile adoption as does the 'Jet Setter' who takes a similar amount of trips and usually pays for the premium experience for both air and hotels.
When comparing mobile and web sessions, the Jet Setter has equal usage while for the 'Savvy Traveler' the balance is still tipped slightly in favour of the web.
Further personas identified in the research include:
- High-tech Newbie - the millennial who travels every three months and often tags on some leisure time
- The Cautious Planner who takes about two trips a year and finds travel more of an annoyance.
Concur goes into further detail on the personas in terms of male or female travellers with more than 70% of the Savvy Traveler profile being male and 74% of the Jet Setter profile also male.
In addition, the Savvy Traveler and Jet Setter personas account for 13% of users and 46% of total spend while the High-tech Newbie is 16% of users and 21% of spend and the Cautious Planner is 55% of users and 13% of spend.
For the purpose of the study, Concur looked at 40 million users and $76bn in annual spend.
The company is not the first to try and profile travellers with Amadeus with its Traveller Tribes and SITA both using personas to help businesses improve targeting and personalisation.
And, finally - a couple of fun facts highlighted in the report:
- Several Concur log-ins have originated from the International Space Station
- The single highest line item submitted on an expense report was for $2.2 million
- Monday, November 30 was the busiest day for expense reports, with 534,669 reports submitted
- The most expensive ride sharing transaction was for $27,244 in New York, New York
The Concur State of Business Travel 2016 report can be read
here.