With web conferencing, virtual meetings and other ways of doing business without actually meeting the other person in the flesh on the rise, you’d think that the amount of money businesses spend on corporate travel would be in decline. Not so. A report released by GBTA several weeks ago forecasted that business travel spending would rise by nearly 2% in the UK this year, with this level of growth only set to ‘accelerate’ in 2014.
The report states that business spending will top £26.5 billion this year, up from £25.9 billion last year. It also points to the fact that a large proportion of this travel spend will be for journeys domestically, meaning that the UK economy and in particular hotels, restaurants, train and plane operators are set to benefit the most.
And with the recent news that Leeds Metropolitan University has expanded its business centre, the appetite for office accommodation and growth in the heart of the city surely means that there will be an influx of business travellers to this particular corporate hub of the north.
In terms of finding a hotel in Leeds in which to relax for the night and perhaps catch up on additional work, businessmen and women visiting the city are seemingly well catered for. Novotel Leeds Centre is one of the better-known Leeds hotels tailored towards business travellers. It also caters for families, so may be worth revisiting at a later date if you have children and happen to find yourself needing a hotel in Leeds again.
As for business travel spending, the report went on to say that 2012 was a stagnant year in part due to the Olympics meaning that business people avoided travelling to London, a journey which reportedly accounts for 35% of all domestic corporate movement. But with Visa’s head of global commercial solutions, Tad Fordyce, stating recently that ‘travel is a key driver of economic growth’ there is indeed an indication that 2013 will be a good year for those depleted British coffers.
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Photo by reinholdbehringer on Flickr