Business tourism or business travel is a more limited and focused subset of regular tourism. During business tourism (traveling), individuals are still working and being paid, but are doing so away from both their workplace and home.
Some definitions of tourism exclude business travel. However, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) defines tourists as people “traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”.
Significance
Historically, business tourism takes the form of traveling to, spending money and staying abroad, being away for some time, and has a history as long as that of international trade. In late 20th century, business tourism was seen as a major industry.
According to the 1998 data from the British Tourist Authority and National Tourist Boards, business tourism accounted for about 14% of all trips to or within the UK, and 15% of the tourist market within the UK. A 2005 estimate suggested that those numbers for UK may be closer to 30%. Sharma (2004) cited a UNWTO estimated that business tourism accounts for 30% of international tourism, through its importance varies significantly between different countries.
Characteristics
Compared to regular tourism, business tourism involves a smaller section of the population, with different motivations, and additional freedom-of-choice-limiting constraints imposed through the business aspects. Destinations of business tourism are much more likely to be areas significantly developed for business purposes (cities, industrial regions, etc.). An average business tourist is more wealthy than an average leisure tourist, and is expected to spend more money.
Business tourism can be divided into primary and secondary activities. Primary ones are business (work)-related, and included activities such as consultancy, inspections, and attending meetings. Secondary ones are related to tourism (leisure) and include activities such as dining out, recreation, shopping, sightseeing, meeting others for leisure activities, and so on. While the primary ones tend to be seen as more important, the secondary ones are nonetheless often described as “substantial”.
Business tourism can involve individual and small-group travel, and destinations can include small to larger meetings, including conventions and conferences, trade fairs, and exhibitions. In the US, about half of business tourism involves attending a large meeting of some kind.
Most tourist facilities, such as airports, restaurants and hotels, are shared between leisure and business tourists, through a seasonal difference is often apparent (for example, business tourism may use those facilities during times less attractive for leisure tourists, such as when the weather conditions are less attractive).
Operation
A service in the public service is a business trip at the place of service or residence. Actions may be subject to simplified approval procedures, so that verbal approval by superiors is sufficient, for example.
Occasions for Business Travel
Business trips are for example
Trips to customers or suppliers and to external service meetings
Participation in professional conferences, congresses, seminars or professional development
Visiting fairs and exhibitions in the interests of the employer
Excursions and class trips by teachers
Rides to cooperation partners or for research projects
Fieldwork and other research trips of scientists
Observation and measurement campaigns
other external services, eg B. in construction, preparation of reports, surveys
temporary secondments to other officials of officials or other employees’ companies.
Business tourism can be divided into:
traditional business traveling, or meetings – intended for face-to-face meetings with business partners in different locations
incentive trips – a job perk, aimed at motivating employees (for example, approximately a third of UK companies use this strategy to motivate workers)
conference and exhibition traveling – intended for attending large-scale meetings. In an estimated number of 14,000 conferences worldwide (for 1994), primary destinations are Paris, London, Madrid, Geneva, Brussels, Washington, New York, Sydney and Singapore
The words meetings, incentive, conferences and exhibition in the context of business tourism are abbreviated as MICE.
Need for business travelers and other solutions
The business trip is a way to meet people – current and future employees, suppliers, customers – and see for yourself a situation. Direct human contact is sometimes important and distance hinders the understanding of a situation. Travel has become all the more important as supply and delivery chains have become longer, due to economic globalization: suppliers, customers, markets to be prospected are sometimes thousands of kilometers away from the decision-making center or production.
Modern means of communication can to some extent be a substitute for travel: teleconferencing, document sharing via computer network (especially the Internet), electronic signatures can facilitate remote problem solving and to a certain extent substitute for direct human contact., but pose the problem of data security (data integrity during transfer, possible data interception).
But business travel is also a way to bring labor to a site in need. It may be to strengthen a team in place, or to perform a specific mission (installation of a machine, maintenance, inspection visit, forecasting a particular problem…). In general, there is no alternative to displacement. An effective territorial organization can, however, limit the costs and inconveniences caused; for example, an organization in agencies or brigades dedicated to a geographical area makes it possible to limit the amplitude of the displacements.
Professional travel can be an important component of some positions. This is particularly the case for passenger representatives (VRP), business “external operations” (installation and on-site maintenance of appliances installed at a customer’s site), and mobile Gendarmerie- type policing services. or Republican Security Company (CRS), a civil security unit such as the units of instruction and intervention of the civil security (UIISC)…
Risks and impact of business travel
Most of the risks are common with pleasure travel.
By definition, displacement involves transport, so the first risk is transport-related, mainly road accidents and the thromboembolic syndrome of prolonged sitting. It should also be noted that road accidents are the leading cause of occupational accidents in France (including commuting accidents), and the leading cause of death while traveling abroad (tourism).
There are risks related to the location of the trip. It can be a professional risk related to the activity of the company (site, industrial risk), a risk related to infectious diseases endemic to the place visited (malaria, viroses, tuberculosis, brucellosis, hepatitis, fever typhoid…), a risk related to natural disasters, and a risk related to public security disorders (state of war, crime, terrorism).
The fact of having time differences (repeated trips east-west over long distances) causes tiredness, drowsiness, irritability, digestive disorders and difficulties of concentration. Finally, being away from home often causes uprooting problems, especially addictive behavior and risky sexual behavior.
Likewise, professional travel, like any trip, has an environmental impact, linked to the consumption of mostly fossil energy (kerosene, gasoline, diesel) and generating greenhouse gas emissions. Displacement can also have a social impact on the country visited, which can be positive, by injecting currency into the local economy, or negative, by promoting illegal behavior (eg corruption) or by unbalancing the local market (the traveler increases demand and therefore de facto prices); this regardless of the business activity.
The responsibility of the company is engaged: it must ensure its duty of protection of the collaborator on the move 1. It is required to assess risks, inform employees and avoid these risks.
Preparation of displacement
All or part of the preparation can be carried out by a department of the company, in particular by a commercial or executive assistant, a travel management service, or by an external service provider such as a travel agency. But more and more, it is the business travelers themselves who book their own trips. Technological evolutions make this practice easier and employees are now used to booking trips themselves for their leisure, so they have the experience and the means necessary to avoid using an intermediary. In some cases, however, the intervention of a travel agent is necessary especially for complex journeys.
The preparation typically comprises several steps:
preparation of material and necessary information;
organization of travel: reservation of transportation (train, plane, coach, rental car, taxi), public transport forecast, or use of personal vehicle;
organization of accommodation if necessary;
administrative preparation: validity of identity documents (driver’s license if using a car, identity card or passport and visa in case of travel abroad), any information to be provided to the structure visited (to allow access to the site);
medical preparation in case of travel abroad, or if the traveler suffers from a disease (chronic or occasional): vaccinations, prophylaxis, repellent for insects, information on the particular health risks, monitoring of the hemogram (intervention on site carrying a radioactive risk), forecasting repatriation (assistance company);
preparation of security in areas presenting a recurring disorder to public order: bodyguard, who to call in case of crisis;
appointments with the persons visited (place, date, time);
…
An unexpected move, or the unexpected extension of a shift, may require “improvisation”.
Means for business travel
Certain employees provide employers with business cars for business trips, which can sometimes be used on private occasions. An alternative is to grant a mobility budget that can be used across all modes of transport. If the business traveler does not do this himself, internal agencies (eg secretariats), but also external service providers (eg travel managers) are entrusted with the preparation and follow-up of the journey.
Travel expenses
Refund
The reimbursement of workers’ travel expenses is usually governed by collective or collective agreements or a works agreement. The employee is reimbursed for travel costs, accommodation costs and additional meals (“expenses”) as well as other expenses. In the civil service and many other employers, fixed daily rates (commonly called “diets”) are defined for the additional costs at the destination, depending on the average effort in each country and, in some cases, on the service. For proof, a well-founded exceedance of these rates is usually compensated.
The travel costs themselves are generally charged with second-class rail travel or kilometers driven; For air travel, however, the regulations are very different. Billing may also be agreed on the basis of tax regulations.
If the expected outlays are relatively high, the employee can claim an advance on travel expenses.
For civil servants, judges, soldiers and civil servants (in Germany) travel expenses are governed by the Federal Travel Expenses Act and the travel expenses laws of the individual federal states.
The reimbursement of the travel expenses of freelancers according to a legal fee regulation in Germany is treated under travel expenses (expenses).
Taxation
In the case of a longer-term outward-looking activity, only a limited period of time is usually recognized as a business trip. After the expiry of this period (three months in Germany, and sometimes shorter in Austrian tax law), the place of external activity is regarded as a new regular workplace and the period begins again.
In France, from a tax point of view, in case of prolonged displacement, only the first three months are considered as a business trip. After this three-month period, the place of destination is considered a new normal place of work, and the time starts again at zero.
Various countries (the Netherlands, Belgium) have implemented tax or legal schemes encouraging less polluting journeys for commuting and / or work (courier for example) Cycling (for distances that allow it) can be part of it, with a kilometric bike allowance and / or related tax benefits.
“Mixed” cause
By resolution of 21 September 2009, the Grand Senate of the Federal Fiscal Court has almost completely abolished the so-called ” allocation prohibition” in the case of tax deductions for business trips, when these have been mixedly initiated. Thus, it became possible to split expenses for the return trip separately. Affected are both self-employed and employees. The “allocation prohibition” was previously derived from no. 1 sentence EStG, cf. Business expenses with examples.
According to the BFH decision, it must be possible to split the expenditures between the periods of the business trip for private life and the professional or business event. Furthermore, the operational reasons for the business trip may not be subordinated to other reasons. It must also be possible to specify objective criteria for the division of the mission. Private and operational motives should not be too closely intertwined. In addition to time shares but also other distribution scales are conceivable.
“This can also have an impact on the assessment of other mixed expenses,” adds the BFH press release. Previously, a breakdown of expenses in the use of cars, computers and telephones was already possible. The distribution ban on business trips dates back to the time of the Reichsfinanzhof. The almost complete removal of this ban therefore constitutes a change in case law.
The BFH decision of 21 September 2009 referred to a visitor and guest speaker of a four-day computer trade show in Las Vegas, who spent three more days in the city. The BFH allowed four-sevenths of the flight costs to be deducted.
By two judgments of 21 April 2010 on group travel, the BFH affirmed its new case law. In addition to specialized training sseminaren and -Vorträgen were in the case of a language course for English teachers to Ireland a day trip, a city tour and evening cultural events on the program, in the case of sports medicine training at Lake Garda each day were between literacy training in various sports itself, In the first case that was before instance In the other, the decision of the tax court was confirmed to recognize half of the travel expenses as income-related expenses.
Entrepreneurial
The entrepreneur is obliged to instruct employees who travel on business in this regard. This obligation results from the ArbSchG and the autonomous regulation BGV A1 (Berufsgenossenschaftliche regulation for safety and health at work). The instruction must include safety rules that must be observed by the employee before starting the journey, while driving and after completing the journey (see Travel Safety). For special risks, eg. As the transport of cargoes in the car or van (spare parts, materials, etc.) is the employee in these particular issues in addition to instruct. The fulfillment of the obligation can be carried out by instructions “security on business trips”, “securing loads in cars and vans”. The instruction must be documented in writing and must not be older than twelve months for each employee. In addition, all company vehicles must undergo an annual UVV inspection in accordance with BGV D29. The test certificates must be in writing. This can be done in the workshops within the scope of the customer service, if the written proof is present. In addition, a risk assessment shall determine whether the G25 (Assessment of vision of driving,
The business trip to France in the salaried environment
In the salaried community, the duration of a business trip is considered as working time when such a shift falls during normal working hours.
The reimbursement of travel expenses is generally regulated in a collective agreement or in the context of a company agreement. The travel and accommodation costs as well as additional expenses for meals and other expenses are reimbursed to the employee. The settlement of these costs can also be agreed on the basis of the tax directives. The duration of a business trip and the distance to the place of work or to the home are decisive factors for the calculation of expenses incurred.
In case of significant expenses, an advance payment can be asked to the employer for the payment of the expenses of displacement.
Source from Wikipedia