🙋Aloha Travel Practitioners.
Welcome to Day 10 of our Travel business mini-training/workshop.
📍For day 10;
let’s look at how travel evolved from moving from one point to another point for many other substantial reasons to strictly traveling specifically for Business.
📍Question:
HOW DID TRAVEL EVOLVED TO BUSINESS TRAVEL ?
🎯Answer:
From ancient times, the exchange of goods across communities has been a major driver of business travel. Once agriculture developed beyond the subsistence levels, communities began to trade agricultural products with one another hence the origins of business travel (i.e traveling solely do business(trade goods and items). This led to identification of markets and by extension, markets growth.
We can trace the progress in the history of business travel, from ancient trades land routes, sea routes, and steam locomotives to air routes.
Business travel is nearly as old as business itself and originated with trade between communities and the earliest business travelers were farmers, artisans and small-scale traders.
Farmers carry their farm produce, livestock etc with them and travel several kilometers to surrounding communities’ markets places to sell them or exchange them for other needs as the case may be.
As urban settlements began to grow and develop; artisans producing diverse ranges of crafts and artworks including clothes, tools and decorative arts etc sprang up.
These artisans traveled extensively and roamed surrounding communities and the countryside exchanging their crafts and artworks for food, wine, clothes, money, accommodation etc.
Artisans also travel farther, off to farther countries to market their crafts and artworks especially if they were of high quality or were made of materials not available in those countries and distance of travel covered often times is thousands of miles from the location they were made.
The great empires of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome
The rise of great empires including those of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, among others, further stimulated this growth of trade-based business travel.
For example, in the Roman Empire, well-established trade routes developed across the empire, transporting goods in all directions. The museums of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa are full of evidence of this fact.
A local museum of the Roman period in the UK, for example, could well contain pottery made in Italy, olive stones from Spain, wine jars from Greece and precious stones from Asia and the Middle East.
However, once these empires fell, there was often a period of economic and political instability, and as ever such instability was seen as undesirable and tended to temporarily reduce the volume of business travel.
The medieval trade fairs.
By the medieval period business travel for trade was well established and its infrastructure included a number of massive trade fairs in strategically located towns and cities.
There were vital days in the calendar for medieval merchants.
The fairs might last for several weeks during which time attendees would make great use of local accommodation, eating and entertainment facilities.
One of the most famous of these fairs was the Beaucaire trade fair on the Rhone river in Southern France which attracts tens of thousands of visitors.
Other early forms of specialist travel
Throughout history, there have been three highly specialist but important forms of specialist business travel, notably:
- Priests of all religions who often had to travel as paid recruited members of diverse sects making pilgrimages to shrines, holy sites and diverse places deemed as important to their heritage, roots and existence.
- Soldiers, particularly mercenaries, travelling to take part in battles or moving into newly occupied territory. Even more often they simply moved because they were ordered to move to a different garrison.
- People migrating temporarily in connection with their trade. In many rural communities in France, for example, there was until recently a tradition of crafts people moving to cities to practice their trade for a few months every year when there was little demand for their services at home on the farms at certain times of the year.
Interestingly though quite of very ancient origins, these three forms of specialist travel survived in many parts of the world.
Having started in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in ancient times, the focus of development between 1000 BC and AD 1900 was generally Europe.
The first roads were built around 4000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, which became the country of Iraq. The stone-paved streets ran through the cities of Babylon and Ur. The wheel would not be invented for another 500 years, so the primary mode of transport along those roads was on foot. The development of these roads allowed business districts to establish themselves along certain streets, demarcating places for business from places for leisure, rest, and home. Millennia later, business travelers would use the same basic concept of a road to travel relatively short distances for meetings, conferences, and other business purposes.
3000 B.C.First major trade routes form along Arabian Sea
By 3000 B.C., ships were establishing routes to trade goods across the Arabian sea. Some of the primary goods traded along these routes were copper ore from Oman, teakwood from India, and incense from Arabia. Traders bartered these items for wheat, cheese, and barley, which were common in ports and countries further north. For centuries, ships were the primary mode of transport for goods between distant parts of the world. Not until the invention of the airplane in the 20th century was there another way to get tradeable goods between continents and across oceans.
Marco Polo travels the Silk Road.
Marco Polo was an Italian merchant, explorer, and writer who traveled the Silk Road in the 13th century.
In 1271, he traveled with two family members through an extraordinary swath of land on a 24-year journey.
Countries the Polos trekked through included Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
The travelers intended to embark from the Persian port city of Hormuz into China by sea but abandoned this plan when they saw the poor condition of the ships they were meant to board for travel.
The Polos traveled primarily on horseback through Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, and all the way to China.
The Silk Route
In the Middle Ages, perhaps the greatest business travel route of all time; the Silk Route reached its peak.
Although named after one commodity, this route was a conduit for the transportation of a wide variety of goods from Asia to Europe and vice versa.
Though the term Silk Route implies a single route, the fact is that there were a number of routes, starting and ending in different places. The Silk Route was very important in two main ways:
Firstly, it stimulated the growth of a sophisticated set of support systems for business travelers including accommodation and restaurants – the ‘Caravanserai’ – transport services such as camel traders and guides.
Secondly, the route was also the way in which scientific inventions and ideas, as well as goods, moved from Asia to Europe and vice versa. It was this route that inspired phenomenum as diverse as gunpowder, new religions, knowledge of astronomy and advances in medicine to Europe and the Middle East, from Asia.
The Silk Route also created a network of major stopping points on the route which have tended to remain major trading cities ever since.
For example, the role of Istanbul, a great trading centre, linking Asia and Europe, was established partly due to the Silk Route.
The industrial age and business travel
Business travel and tourism in Europe grew dramatically between 1750 and 1900, for four main reasons:
- The Industrial Revolution, which began in the UK, steadily spread to many other European countries. This movement increased the scale of production of industrial goods which then had to be marketed and transported.
This stimulated growth in business travel and the emergence of new commercial travelers termed “on-the-road salespersons”.
- Many European countries developed empires in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and these colonies created a demand for business travel.
Industrialists needed the raw materials from those countries while their populations also provided a market for the finished goods.
Furthermore, administering the colonies created a demand for business travel for the ‘army’ of colonial administrators from the home country to the colony, and within the colony.
- This period saw the improvement of roads in general in Europe which made business travel easier.
- The railway was born.
Rail travel was faster than road transport and allowed business travellers to make business trips to more distant cities without it costing too much in terms of time or money.
Because of these factors, in Europe at least, the late nineteenth century in particular was a major period of growth for international business travel.
In 1825, the first steam locomotive transported 450 people 25 miles between the two towns of Darlington and Stockton, England, at 15 miles per hour. The engine would have enormous implications for the future of travel.
Once the power of steam engines became obvious, plans for horse-drawn railways were scrapped and in their place, railways that could transport heavy goods like coal, not to mention people sprung up all across the world.
In the United States, the railway facilitated westward expansion through the country, which led to the development of railway and mining towns throughout the American West as people moved westward in pursuit of business opportunities and new ventures.
The early twentieth century
As the twentieth century dawned, the next major development in business travel and tourism was taking place in the USA.
Meetings have gone on since time immemorial, but the concept of the conference or convention was developed, at this time, in the USA.
Trade and scientific associations, together with the political parties, began to organize large-scale gatherings in the late nineteenth century.
This activity gathered pace in the early decades of the twentieth century. Cities soon realized that hosting such events brought great economic benefits; and convention bureaus began to appear to market cities as convention destinations.
As Rogers (1998) notes, the first was established in Detroit in 1896,
Followed soon after by Cleveland (1904),
Then Atlanta City (1908),
Denver and St Louis (1909) and
Louisville and Los Angeles (1910).
The phenomenon of the business convention bureau is now well established around the world.
Due to these factors and several others unmentioned; Europe in the late nineteenth century in particular was a major growth driver of international business travel. Then the United States of America increasingly; began to make its impact felt.
1935: The DC-3 commercial plane transforms business travel
The invention of the commercial airplane would change business travel forever. Where business travel had initially been limited to destinations within driving or railway distance—or conducted via arduous longer journeys—the development of the DC-3 plane in 1935 heralded the dawn of the era of quick flights. The DC-3 entered commercial service flying coast-to-coast across the United States, albeit with an overnight stop. Business travelers who once would have had to embark upon a week-long train or car journey on the same route could complete it in less than a day. Decades later, business travel in the air is exceptionally popular.
1958: The first transcontinental business flights
In 1958, Boeing introduced the world to 707 airliners. These would prove to be transformative for transcontinental business travel. That same year, Pan Am introduced overseas flights on 707s. This allowed business partners, for example, in London and New York, to meet to discuss business far more efficiently than ever before. A journey that would have taken nearly a week at sea could be cut down to just several hours on the 707s.
1979: Business-class flight tickets are introduced
In 1979, the airline Qantas introduced business class tickets. Due to the rising popularity of air travel in the preceding decades, airports and planes themselves were more crowded than they had been in the early days of travel. Qantas—and other airlines shortly after—introduced business fares as a way to shield travelers from crowds. The extra space and separation from the noise of the airport came with a price, however. Business-class fares were more expensive than those sold for coach. Today, a business-class fare can cost up to five times the price of a coach ticket.
The ‘tiger economies’ of South East Asia and the oil-rich states of the Middle East dominated developments in terms of both demand and supply in the late twentieth century.
In spite of the economic problems in Asia in the late 1990s, Japanese and Taiwanese business travellers are now a major element in the global market, and Asian cities and hotel chains are widely regarded as the leaders in terms of quality and service.
2020: Business travel grounded
Business travel was sidelined as COVID-19 swept the globe in 2020. Travelers who once would have boarded trains, planes, and automobiles to shake hands with business contacts in person were suddenly told to stay home. Business meetings shifted to Zoom and other forms of virtual communication. Business travel budgets declined by 90% or more in 2020. Further, 93% of companies suspended international business travel.
2021: Business travel makes a comeback
In 2021, there are signs that business travel is making a comeback. After 18 months of pandemic-related restrictions on travel, people are itching to hit the road again. A whopping 96% of business travelers have said they are excited to travel again. A further 80% say they are concerned their careers will suffer if they do not make face-to-face connections in business. Industry experts have said that business travelers are now open to traveling further, taking extended stays, and staying in new types of accommodations.
END.