Extended marketing campaigns 'needed for business travel firms'

Extended marketing campaigns should be deployed by travel companies in order to get businesses traveling, it has been suggested.

Business Travel Magazine said the hotel and airline industries in particular need to encourage businesses to travel through long-term marketing strategies.

The message comes after the Office for National Statistics revealed that trips business trips overseas dropped by 22 percent last year, while such trips to the UK fell by a fifth.

According to Gill Upton, editor of the Business Travel Magazine, many companies in the travel sector did not survive 2009.

Those which did may have ensured that frequent business travelers made repeat bookings, through customer retention and loyalty strategies.

Highlighting the benefits of face-to-face meetings could have also been part of marketing campaigns to gain new business travel customers last year. Indeed, many companies may have thought that in light of the economic downturn, more effort should be taken to provide a personal service, such as by visiting clients abroad.

Indeed, a survey conducted last month by the Business Travel and Meetings Show found that 35 percent of buyers plan to book more trips, while 27 percent of travel budgets will be increased for 2010.

Furthermore, just a quarter of buyers will make fewer bookings. This could show that marketers at travel firms may want to pay close attention to current customers and ensure that they continue to see business travel as a favorable option.

Deploying a customer retention strategy - which may include a customer loyalty program such as collecting points - could ensure that business travel does not take a turn for the worse this year.