The Joy of Travel Gets Old

Business travelers across all age groups have more in common than what sets them apart. In BTN's 2017 Traveler Happiness Survey, younger travelers showed more desire for personal time as compensation for travel, while older travelers expressed a greater need of support during travel disruptions. What's more, personal safety and access to reliable Internet and data connections surfaced among the top five most important trip factors for all age groups. Three other factors appeared across three groups. Clearly, travel buyers have an opportunity to boost traveler satisfaction across generations by concentrating on just a few areas.

The Common Threads

Reliable Internet topped both the 25-to-35 and 46-to-55 groups' lists of most important trip factors and cracked the top three of the other age groups. The gap between how important travelers said it was and how effective they perceived their companies to be at it was nearly a full point across all groups.

Of course, much of that is out of buyers' control. While they can negotiate or reimburse for Wi-Fi for travel, there is little they can do when a supplier has Wi-Fi issues. "[A] meeting I just went to was on Amtrak, and there is free Wi-Fi, but it's not great Wi-Fi," a 52-year-old university employee said. "I had the intention of taking an hour and a half on a train and catching up on some things, and the Wi-Fi was in and out."

Some employers allow travelers to use data plans to create hotspots from their mobile devices. Suppliers also often allow higher-speed access at a premium, so allowing or negotiating that could boost traveler satisfaction.

Internet access factors into travelers' productivity, and while a company's support of productivity on the road did not rank in the five most important trip factors in any age group, it still ranked relatively high across all. Also, the gap between importance and effectiveness was about one point across the board. Some travelers said cost-savings policies have made it difficult to work in the air even if they have Wi-Fi. "In economy class, not having enough space to spread out and get some work done is frustrating," a 41-year-old manufacturing industry executive said. "I had to petition my company to give me a smaller laptop because I wanted to be able to work more on planes."

Personal safety was the other high scorer among all age groups, and the youngest travelers had the smallest gap between importance and efficiency. A 26-year-old media employee told BTN her company required her to check in every so often when she traveled to a neighborhood in Chicago that had a history of violence. "I feel like if I ever had any worries about safety, they would totally accommodate me," she said. "They were way over-cautious when I was in Chicago, but I appreciated it."

Convenience similarly scored high in importance across all age groups. Convenient flight times, hotel locations, etc., for example, was among the five most important factors for all groups except ages 56 to 65, where it was close. The same was the case for ease of expense reporting, which scored essentially the same across all groups. A 36-year-old attorney who still faxes receipts manually and has to prove exceptions for missing receipts, even for a parking meter, said expense reporting was among her biggest pet peeves in business travel. For many younger travelers, the automated experience is all they know. "It's just magical," a 28-year-old media employee said of his automated expense reporting tool, Concur. "The mobile app can get occasionally glitchy … but otherwise, I enjoy the experience."

Travel's Fading Luster

For younger travelers, the newness of travel can can boost traveler satisfaction, but that does not always last. "When I was much younger, the travel was more exciting and I enjoyed it more, but it's been a slow change to more of a mediocrity," a 61-year-old electrical engineer said. "I don't particularly enjoy it, but I don't particularly mind it. It's one of those things you have to do."

Of course, the longer one travels, the more one is exposed to the occasional hassles, which can add up. Travel disruption support ranked in the five most important factors across all age groups except 25 to 35, though that group scored it relatively high, as well. Pre-trip travel advisories about serious incidents, however, ranked as the most important for travelers ages 56 to 65, and it had a gap of a full point between importance and companies' efficacy. Travelers ages 36 to 55 also scored it as relatively important, while younger travelers considered it much less so.

"Anyone who travels for work likes it in the beginning, but then it gets burdensome," said a 46-year-old telecom training director. He also wished for more notice for trip disruptions. "It always seems that if you have a canceled flight, they don't tell you until you're at the airport. It also seems that if you have a gate change, they don't push out the text message fast enough for you to get from one gate to another."

Such communication can build travelers' respect for well-managed programs. A 41-year-old HR manager who recently left a large company to form her own said she misses trip-disruption support most. "I called the travel agency, and they figured it out," she said. "I don't have to be on the phone with JetBlue for five hours. They'll handle it, and it's not a problem."

Older travelers also simply can become numb to travel. "We have a lot of younger folks, first-year analyst associates, and they really like traveling," said a 39-year-old investment bank director who views travel as a duty before pleasure. "They think that traveling's really fun, and I tell them all the time [that] travel is a privilege of working. It's not like a 4-H Camp."

Reclaiming Their Time

The biggest opportunity for a travel program was represented by the 1.7-point gap between how important 25-to 35-year-olds view compensatory time for business trips that span a holiday or weekend and how well they think their companies deliver on that premise. As travelers aged, they viewed that factor as significantly less important; 56- to 65-year olds ranked it among the least important. Similarly, among older travelers, the expectation of downtime after travel declined.

A 31-year-old portfolio director praised her company for allowing leisure travel time to be tacked on to the end of work trips. "You work hard while on a work trip, but my department was very good at rewarding you for hard work," she said. "So it was acceptable to take a day, afternoon or whole weekend to enjoy whatever city you were working in once the work is done." A 70-year-old advertising rep, on the other hand, often passed up the chance for extra time off after travel. "I understand that I'm here because the company has a need, and being the loyal employee that I am, I show up every day and I do the job that the company asks me to do. I've left vacation time on the table, but that's me; everybody's different. I have always felt that I've been able to take additional time off, but I just haven't."

Of course, those in the youngest group also are most likely to be new parents, and several said the birth of a child or being away from a spouse made the work-life balance significantly harder. A 39-year-old consultant said long international trips were especially hard, though technology has made it easier. "FaceTime has helped a lot actually with that. It used to be so much more expensive or just harder," he said. "It has a little bit of an impact on my partner. We've been together for 15 years, so he's not going to die if I'm gone for a week."

Some travelers said business travel provided a welcome change of routine. "A lot of my mundane Groundhog Day is [broken up] whenever I can say, "OK, it's the third birthday party [I've had to take my daughter to], but tomorrow I'm flying first class to New York City and we're all having a big party on a rooftop," a 39-year-old energy industry executive said. "It's a nice break."

Traveler Perceptions on a Scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (good)