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Report: Millennials Travel for Business Most Often, Despite Added Stress

According to new research from MMGY Global, millennials are traveling more often than their older colleagues—and they don't mind, despite concerns about being away from their young families. And quite often, they're going to conferences.

If a organization is looking to send someone to a conference, odds are that it’s going to be one of the company’s younger employees.

That’s a point underlined by MMGY Global’s recent Portrait of Business Travelers survey, based on the responses of 1,007 U.S. adults who have traveled for business over the past year and plan to do so in the future.

The survey found that millennials took more business trips in the past year, on average 7.4, than their older colleagues. In comparison, Gen Xers took 6.4 trips in the past year, while baby boomers took 6.3 trips. Millennials also outpaced the overall average of 6.8 trips per year.

The top reason business travelers find themselves on the road is conference attendance, at 62 percent; millennials, at 74 percent, are the most likely age group to attend such events. (Another key reason millennials travel? To meet with people from other companies for business purposes, which 77 percent of millennial respondents said they did.)

That shift in audience is important to note, and it comes with some different habits. As Skift reports, millennials, despite traveling more often than other age groups, are more likely to say that such trips are disruptive to their family lives.

“The biggest surprise is that millennials take the most trips and want to take more, despite believing it has a negative impact on their family life,” MMGY Analyst Leanne Hill noted in comments to Skift. “We didn’t ask why this is, but we can infer that they think it’s necessary in order to advance in their career and they’re more likely to have younger children at home.”

(One thing that might help matters for millennials is their willingness to extend trips for leisure—and when they do, they bring along a friend 60 percent of the time.)

Additionally, they’re less likely to use loyalty programs, which means that they tend to be more flexible in their approaches.

“We know that bleisure travel is here to stay and we predict that business travelers will embrace the sharing economy,” MMGY Vice President of Insights Steve Cohen said in a news release.

Check out the infographic below for more highlights from the survey:

Infographic

 

(iStock/Thinkstock)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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