US: Business travel resumes, hesitantly

Business travel has started again, but in fits and starts. Hotels and airlines have reported a rise in bookings for travel in the United States in the last couple of months. The expanded Javits Convention Center, New York City’s main convention hall, reopened on Sunday and had a number of big events on its schedule for the rest of the year, including the New York International Auto Show. Then last week, as Covid-19 cases rose, the auto show’s organizers canceled it, though the center said it was keeping other events on its books. San Diego’s convention center, which reopened last week, is still expecting a series of shows this fall. (On the calendar for Thanksgiving weekend: a “special edition” of Comic-Con.) But the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus is throwing a new wrench into businesses’ plans, and the question is whether the spike in cases will be brief or more long-lived. Travel experts said they remained optimistic that business travel will pick up substantially later this year and early in 2022. Or as Christopher J. Nassetta, the president and CE of Hilton, put it on an earnings call last month, “People have to meet.” Leisure travel has come roaring back this summer. But the airline and hotel industries long depended on business travel for a substantial portion of their revenues because those customers, who often made their plans at the last minute, could be counted on to pay more for seats and rooms. Now that the pandemic has upended the notion that travel is necessary to do business, the question is how much it will resume, even when Covid is brought under control. Even the experts who were most optimistic about the prospects for business travel a month or so ago have begun to temper their forecasts. Story has more.<br/>