Business travel is surviving the Zoom era as leaders return to flying

It turns out that jetsetting on corporate money has an eternal appeal. Business trips can conjure up images of fancy first-class tickets to big cities or staying at a Hilton in a small town about 20 minutes from the airport. Either way, it appears the pandemic hasn’t killed the business travel bug.

The brakes on business travel were first pulled when COVID-19 hit, as lockdowns and international travel restrictions were introduced. Zoom launched while planes were stuck, as the videoconferencing business grew from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million a few months later in April 2020.

When the lockdown was lifted, some were itching to go on holiday again (to the point where the term ‘revenge travel’ was coined), but business travel was slow to take off. The slow return raised questions about whether business travel was at the end of an era. Perhaps Zoom and remote work eliminated the need to leave the house, let alone the country, to truly connect with others.

“Companies will not support non-essential travel if the proposed work can be done virtually,” Brian Bloom, Korn Ferry’s vice president of Global Benefits and Mobility Operations, said in 2021. And as bosses tried to cut costs by cutting travel eliminate The employees also did not want to endanger their health. According to an IBM survey of 15,000 participants worldwide, only a quarter of people over 55 were able to comfortably travel for work in 2021, even after being vaccinated.

But years later, it seems that business demand has not faded away, but merely gone dormant for a while. And the airlines confirmed that too. Alaska Air reported a return to pre-pandemic levels of business travel, while revenue for corporate accounts rose 22% in the first quarter. Delta and United each reported a 14% increase in revenue in the first quarter, with a United executive noting that the company had nine of the 10 best business booking days in its history this year. That follows the recovery in 2023, when air travel rose to 94% of 2019 levels, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Of course, that doesn’t mean business travel isn’t still experiencing growing pains. A 2023 report from Deloitte found that while there is recovery, the trend is “likely to have limited upside,” partly due to flight costs and sustainability mandates.

Yet the return of business travel comes against the backdrop of a years-long campaign to return to pre-pandemic ways of working, as big names in the technology and finance worlds push for a fully in-person week. One of the main talking points among those proposing a return to office work was that it would create better connections, a similar talking point that comes up when it comes to the benefits of traveling to meet clients in person.

It appears this mentality is slowly gaining momentum, as a 2023 study from the Global Business Travel Association predicted that business travel spending will surpass the pre-pandemic level of $1.4 trillion this year and rise to almost $1.8 trillion. After Omicron and other increases, global business travel began regaining its footing in 2022, according to the trade group.

“The headwinds that were expected to impact the recovery of global business travel over the past year have not materialized and that is good news,” Suzanne Neufang, CEO of Global Business Travel Associate, said in a statement last year. Fortune’s Chris Morris. “This latest forecast now points to an accelerated return to pre-pandemic spending levels, faster than expected, and future growth in the coming years.”

As the ever-looming recession remains unannounced and executives continue to tout the benefits of in-person work, the corporate map is beginning to thaw. It seems as if the floodgates, or air gates, are opening again.

This story originally appeared on Fortune.com