Companies Use Travel Savings to Fund New Return-to-Office Efforts

What does a company travel department do when faced with a 95 percent reduction in spending on business trips? Reinvent itself. Or at least, it can try, because the future of work may throw up complex challenges — and the billions in savings may help fund that reinvention.

International bans largely remain in place, with just 42 percent of companies allowing international travel, according to a recent Global Business Travel Association poll. But more than two-thirds (69 percent) of respondents said their offices had reopened.

The return to offices will be a pivotal moment. Many employees will not have seen each other for more than 18 months now, while most new recruits will have actually never met a colleague.

Consultancy EY, for example, currently has 312,250 staff and is pushing ahead with a “hub-and-spoke” model of offices. Its travel procurement team is a textbook example of how travel managers can evolve into new roles.

EY is using