Business travel as we know it today really took shape in the 1980s, after Qantas introduced the concept of Business Class to its flights in 1979. In the intervening decades, it has come to be associated with frazzled businessmen in suits on red-eye flights, heading straight from the terminal to meetings, then turning around and heading home again.
Yet in 2026, business travel is starting to shift, and the ways we will travel for work in the future look set to be very different from those of previous decades. The pandemic and resulting lockdowns pushed video conferencing software to go mainstream, so today, if we are travelling for work, the journey really needs to be worth it – both in terms of the journey itself and the time spent at the destination.
One of the most interesting and surprising trends in business travel is the plus-one phenomenon. According to a study last year by travel management company Perk, 73 per cent of executives bring family, friends or pets on work trips, with a surprising seven per cent of C-suite bringing a pet along for the ride.
In addition, perhaps due to the rise in those travelling with family or friends, one in five C-suite leaders is extending their trips for leisure. “Business travel has completely changed in the past decade, and trends like this are breaking down the stereotype of a C-Suite executive,” shares Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo, President and COO at Perk. “For me, it’s about having the best of both worlds and sometimes performing at my peak also means seeing my kid at the end of a work day – it provides some normality.”
Of course, extending a trip is also a pretty cost-effective way to see the world, with flights paid for on the company card, not to mention allowing one to travel to far-flung places they might not otherwise dream of. “Corporate platforms like Travelin.ai are accelerating this shift by allowing travellers to blend business and leisure within a single booking experience, intelligently separating corporate and personal spend while still unlocking the benefit of negotiated corporate rates,” explains the founder of Travel Smarter, Richard Viner. “The result is longer stays, more time in destination, and greater opportunity for travellers to maximise both the experience and the loyalty value from the same trip.”
Business travellers are becoming increasingly savvy about maximising the benefits of travelling for work, particularly amid the cost-of-living crisis. Yet while in the past, you mostly found an airline you liked and stuck to it, consistently building up points, earning free leisure travel via a loyalty programme, today it is becoming much more difficult.
