The UK’s business travel sector has seen its strongest week since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
New figures from the Business Travel Association (BTA) showed the final week of February was the best seven-day period for the industry in nearly two years, when compared to the same week in 2019.
BTA said data from travel tech company Travelogix showed that “traveller confidence has returned”, with a 403 per cent increase in new business travel bookings compared with the same week in 2021. Departures for the week also rose by 292 per cent over the same period.
Domestic UK business travel has been leading this recovery, with a 68 per cent increase in departures compared with the same week in 2019.
Clive Wratten, CEO of the BTA, said: “It’s encouraging to see business traveller confidence returning once and for all as we begin to live with Covid. Now we must focus on how we sustainably move forward in a post-Covid world.”
Although the BTA added there had still been a £2.7 billion weekly loss in GDP to the UK economy, due to lower levels of international corporate travel, compared with pre-Covid 2019 levels.