Women in India love to travel for work: Survey

More women than men prefer to travel for work in India while tools like Skype are taking a toll on outbound business travel from the country.

New Delhi: More women than men prefer to travel for work in India while tools like Skype and video-conferencing are taking a toll on outbound business travel from the country, a survey by a leading online travel and tourism site has revealed. The study said "seeing new places on company expense" was one of the biggest travel perks for business travellers.

Unveiling the trends of a business travel survey by TripAdvisor.in Thursday, officials of the global travel portal said "more women prefer work-related travel compared to men". The young too enjoy travelling for work, TripAdvisor officials said. The survey was carried in the first six months of 2011 among respondents in the government, the public sectors, private companies, multinational companies as well as among the self-employed. The survey revealed that "employees increasingly across organisations seem to be looking at technology as a viable alternative to reduce business-related travel, with government officials more inclined to seek recourse to technology to communicate than travel physically". TripAdvisor is a global travel portal that helps travellers in 41 countries plan their trips with related support structures. It logged revenues of $846 million in 2010. "The survey brought interesting trends about the Indian working woman`s behaviour and preferences contrary to traditional perceptions," Nikhil Ganju, country manager of TripAdvisor (India) said. The survey cited that "bulk of the women surveyed (84 percent) believed technology has reduced their work travel needs compared to men, who are traditionally considered to be more tech-savvy". According to the survey, "when women are away on business trips, unattended work back in office tops the woman`s mind compared to men, whose biggest concern is their family". Compared to men, women are likely to extend their business trips to make time for personal holidays, the survey said. Women were also likely to create a business trip that was not really required to wrap up personal work in another city, compared to men, the study said. The study revealed that women also took longer routes to build their airlines miles compared to men. "For newbies (young women) in the age group of 22-25, time away from the family was the least important factor," the survey said. "Companies seem to be very conservative on travel assignments this year with most respondents saying their business travel has not increased or marginally this year," the survey said. More than half the people surveyed admitted that "a break from routine and visiting new places with company money was one of the exciting perks of business travel, along with earning hotel award points and frequent flyer miles", the survey said. IANS