Google Is Cutting Back on Corporate Travel for Workers – Report

Change Take

We last heard expressions like essential and business-critical travel only during the lows of the pandemic, when companies ceased travel to protect their employees. It’s not the sort of language the travel industry wants to hear right now.

Matthew Parsons

Google is cutting back on employee travel and wants to limit any trips to “business critical” only, according to a report.

A leaked memo has reportedly warned that any social functions, full-team offsites and employee travel to in-person events that have a virtual option shouldn’t be approved by Google managers.

Google did not respond to Skift’s request for comment.

The company also told some of its senior managers that it will hold a “high bar” for what should be considered business critical travel.

In a statement provided to The Information, Google said: “We recently shared guidance about taking a responsible approach on expense management, including travel and events. Different product areas and functions are implementing this in a way that works best for their teams, given their business needs.”

Should alarm bells be ringing? After all, terms like “essential” and “critical” travel were last used during the peak episodes of the pandemic.

Many technology companies have been slowing down their recruitment, amid lower growth forecasts and lingering concerns of a recession. In August, Microsoft also planned to reduce spending on business travel and employee gatherings, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

But at the same time, company offsites, retreats and social gatherings are being regarded as a key driver of travel.

“So many companies now have more distributed teams, across cities, across regions and across countries,” said Paul Abbott, CEO of the American Express Global Business Travel — which counts Google as a client — at Citi’s 2022 Global Technology Conference on Sept. 7.

“If you want to succeed as a company, you want to strengthen your culture, you want to motivate people, you want to recognize and reward people, you want to drive innovation and creativity, you’ve got bring people together,” he added. “That will create more travel, and we are seeing that today.”

Abbot also revealed that the agency’s meetings and events division was seeing the organization of meetings of under 50 people was now the fastest recovering part of its business.

“There’s a new generation of business travel coming from distributed teams, and I think that will continue,” he said.