Accor: 20 Percent Decline in Int’l Biz Travel “Could Probably Last Forever”
After a nearly €2 billion net loss in 2020, the Accor Group recovered
for an €85 million net profit for 2021. “We never showed fear,” said chairman and
CEO Sebastien Bazin, “but we were in a very challenging environment.”
That challenge very much included business travel, the
drastic decline of which Bazin detailed with data from Oxford Tourism
Economics. The numbers showed domestic and international business travel, which
accounted for 60 percent of Accor’s business in 2019, remained approximately 25
percent and 75 percent below pre-pandemic volumes in 2021, respectively. And
while Oxford projected domestic business travel to rebound—and surpass—2019