Bev Fearis, Editor of The Business Travel Magazine, chats with Niklas Andréen, President Traveller Experience and Customer at CWT, about why he’s feeling positive about the future of business travel. He believes that despite new technologies such as Zoom and Webex meetings and video conferencing, nothing replaces human interactions in terms of generating new sales, difficult discussions and negotiations and creating innovative environments. He dismisses predictions by Bill Gates of a dramatic drop in business travel and feels that while it might take somewhere between three to five years to get back to the same level as 2019, people meeting people in a global economy is essential so business travel will recover. Andréen also believes travel managers will now play a bigger role than just managing suppliers and will take a more integral role as employee wellbeing and duty of care is higher up on company agendas.
