Expedia’s travel management subsidy Egencia has seen a gradual improvement in the business travel environment over the first three months of 2010.

Vice president of Egencia Americas supplier relations Noah Tratt stated that corporate travellers are starting to return to the road and the air, although companies are still attempting to control their travel expenditures.

However, compared with the first quarter of 2009, the largest price hike in the travel industry for North American business travellers was to London, which were almost a quarter more expensive in terms of the dollars decline.  Tokyo is the only location that dropped in travelling price.

In terms of European point of sales, the picture is a bit fuzzier with Egencia determining that there was a bit of downward pressure in pricing as the result of low cost carriers joining the marketplace and other load factors.  In fact, prices for Europe to London dropped by 5% during the first three months of 2009.

Even lower this quarter in comparison to 2009 were hotel average daily rates according to Egencia, which was the result of corporations still, looking for the best hotel deals even despite the fact that business travel is up overall.

Demand from the events and meeting market is still week with the overcapacity of many key markets causing supply to look distorted.  London, Berlin, Paris, and Munich saw slight increases in their hotel ADR’s however by slight margins ranging from 2-4%.

In order to compile their results, Egencia quizzed travel buyers from North America and Europe out of which 45% of Europeans stated that travel volumes will continue to increase over the course of the year.

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