Twenty-twenty two was the year South Africa showed the world just how different and unique our business landscape is.

International headlines widely broadcasted that business travel would never return to pre-pandemic levels, with business travel recovery painted as ‘elusive’. Global business travel spending was forecast to be coming back at a slower pace than predicted with a full recovery scheduled only for 2026.

The picture looked very different in South Africa. At the end of the year, business travel numbers in our country were vastly surpassing 2019 levels. “Demand came back quicker and a lot more aggressively than any of us would have thought across the whole travel industry,” says Euan McNeil, MD Flight Centre Travel Group South Africa. “Business travel is back to pre-pandemic levels in terms of yield, while the cost-per-transaction is at record level highs.”

The reason South Africa bounced back quicker? Part of the answer might lie in South Africa’s SME sector. SMEs started to travel before the large corporates because corporates had a more sophisticated travel policy, they had to get more approvals and they played it safer than SMEs. SMEs are more flexible – and were ahead of the curve when it came to kickstarting their business travel.