Research by Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) reveals that female travelers pay about 2% less for tickets than their male counterparts. But they are more anxious travelers.
Travel preferences and behaviors vary from one traveler type to another. Traveler groups such as millennials, also called Generation Y, or ‘road warriors’ who are the frequent travelers are often under the spotlight, especially in connection with their technology use and productivity on the go. But CWT, a global company specializing in business travel management, wanted to find out whether also gender differences play a role in booking business travel.
And guess what? There is a clear difference between female and male business travelers.
Female travelers book earlier than their male counterparts, on average. A like-for-like comparison shows a difference of 1.9 advance booking days between the two genders.
One could argue: what is the importance of booking business flights around two days earlier? Well, more than you might think.
As opposed to the leisure segment, business travel is more constraining regarding the dates and places of travel, which implies a smaller selection of flights or hotels is typically available to travelers. As seats get filled, prices increase according to the yield management strategies defined by airlines. With very few exceptions, booking early saves money. Most companies therefore require their employees to reserve flights at least one or two weeks in advance for domestic and continental trips, and three weeks for intercontinental trips.
CWL quantified the financial impact arising from the gender gap. By comparing the ticket prices paid by men and women for the same routes and under the same travel conditions, it measured a difference of $17.3, representing approximately 2% of the average ticket price.
For one ticket this is maybe not a lot of money, but for large companies this gap has the potential to generate significant savings.
For companies with 1,000 business travelers the potential savings can reach to approximately USD50,000 per year. At a traveler population of 20,000 the annual savings can amount up to USD1 million.
Why do women book their business trips earlier than men? One explanation is that women tend to be more organized in an effort to offset their anticipated travel stress, CWL believes. Another study by the corporate-travel firm namely shows that women find business travel more stressful than men. They get more anxious than male business travelers about lost or delayed luggage, flying indirect versus flying direct, last-minute requested trips, delays, having poor or no Internet connection at the hotel, length of journey to reach to the destination, and not being able to eat healthily when travelling. In fact, women perceived travel more stressful on 11 of the 12 factors measured in the CWL analysis.
There is one exception: women are less stressed about travelling in economy class on medium or long-haul flights than men.
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