RICHARD TAMS
AIRLINE CONSULTANT AND EXECUTIVE COACH
There's a new buzzword doing the rounds in business travel circles and it's “purposeful”. According to those in the know, we should all be bracing for “an era of purposeful business travel”. At first glance, this concept rather assumes that up until now we have all been embarking on business trips without purpose, but bear with me while I explain.
Last year, in this column, I referred. That paper made the case that business travel should be seen as a strategic investment in people rather than a cost to a company. Travel industry consultants, Festive Road, who coined the purposeful travel term, have now produced a “Purposeful Travel Model” to go along with it, through which they invite participants to move to a new way of thinking about business travel. They challenge the old assumption that business travel is an unavoidable cost to the company and the planet, and propose we replace the default of “jumping on a plane” with an approach that identifies a professional and personal purpose first and factors in the various virtual meeting options as well. This would also take more consideration of employee well-being and sustainability and ensure that business travel is seen as an investment with a return, not just a cost.
