Corporate travel showing strong recovery signs: Thomas Cook Group

Dhaka: Corporate travel is showing strong recovery signs, said Madhavan Menon, Managing Director of Thomas Cook (India) Group – the first speaker in Sabre's new virtual insights series.

In his speech during the Sabre Ascent series, Menon said that for the month of March 2022, Thomas Cook (India) is witnessing a domestic corporate travel recovery of around 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with international corporate travel starting to follow the same trajectory. 

His remarks were in line with the latest figures released by Sabre in its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which providing updated recovery figures for the period of March 1 to 28 compared to the same period in 2019.

The Sabre filing noted, "While domestic and leisure bookings have continued to lead the recovery, international and corporate bookings have improved at an accelerating rate since January 2022. We expect the March 2022 recovery versus the same period for both international and corporate bookings to be at their highest levels since the pandemic started."

During the first ever Sabre Ascent session, Menon also told Jaya Kumar K, Vice President and Managing Director, Sabre Bengaluru GCC that he expects technology to play a "far greater role" in corporate travel as business travellers expect increased, targeted information to help them navigate travel in a Covid-19 world as well as a much more personalised approach. 

Menon added that Sabre is "leading this crusade of evolving technology in the travel industry, and that is not something which should be underestimated" because his company would not have made so much progress without global distribution technology. 

The webinar also addressed the challenges and opportunities brough about by the pandemic as well as the evolution of domestic tourism, new trends in personalisation, whether sustainability is top of mind moving through the pandemic, and the evolving demands of travellers in this new age of travel. 

Menon concluded that Thomas Cook (India) had resized out of necessity, carried out back-end integration, and upgraded its technology to create a more customer-centric focus.

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