Las Vegas lives and breathes corporate travel and, according to the Wall Street Journal, the post-Coronavirus picture “looks scary … While tourism is making a timid comeback, business travelers are still nowhere to be seen. In the last week of July, itineraries purchased by corporations were down 97% from a year earlier.” No wonder American Gaming Association President Bill Miller is lobbying so hard for a taxpayer bailout of the three-martini lunch. The Global Business Travel Association has crunched the data and reckoned that we’re looking at $2 trillion in lost business worldwide, with little evidence of a comeback in 2021. Meanwhile, Zoom and other online-meeting technologies are making some aspects of business travel redundant, if not obsolete.
“It’s probably a permanent 10%-to-15% impact in the medium- to longer-term,” Sébastien Bazin, CEO of Accor hotel group said. But, as the WSJ notes, business travelers are the high-profit ones for both hotels and airlines: “Corporate fliers make up only 15% of passengers, but 40% of revenues and as much as three-quarters of airline profits in some flights.” And Bazin is, if anything, an optimist. Others are predicting an even deeper falloff in business travel. “In the past three months, 81 earnings calls have referenced a fall in travel expenses and none mentioned an increase, according to transcripts compiled by FactSet.” And, as the conventioneer and trade showman goes, so goes Las Vegas.
This Miller fella spends way too much of his microphone time on corporate lobbying that amounts to valet parking level money, lunches and liability mean squat if the average Joe has no cash to spend… Yes corporate travel is a huge factor, but its a lagging indicator when you compare it to consumer spending and confidence. The economy needs more stimulus, Miller has connections to the politicians who are balking, gaming companies will get thrashed if current trends continue… This is not rocket science, when you pay lobbyists to lobby you handicap your own interests when they focus on pet issues.