Decline of business travel and clubs

I don't notice it personally and I don't travel for business - but over the years on TUSCL there are a fair # of TUSCLers that post they only/mostly SC just when they travel for work I assume either b/c they don't want SCing somehow mixing w/ their family-life where they live; or the clubs in their area not being worth it, if any at all.

So although I don't notice it personally; I imagine it has a decent effect - it's just a questions of how much - 10%? - 25%? - 50%? - hard to know.

I only stopped traveling for a couple of months so I personally didn't notice. I have probably been to more clubs this year than in a while.

I do notice that travel has slowed down again recently. Hadn't seen an empty seat on my flights until the last couple of weeks. I take that to be a combination of school starting and a recent covid surge in some regions of the country.

My clubbing is way down because I used to do 90% of my clubbing while traveling for work since the clubs here near Cincinnati suck.

Pre-covid I would be on the road 8-10 days per month and would hit a club during most of those trips. During the initial lockdown last year my company realized that the trips I was taking to our other midwest offices could be handled via MS Teams video chats instead. Now they have canceled 95% of my business travel and I have only taken 2 trips in the past 12 months for work.

I have started taking a couple days off work every 4-6 weeks just to travel regionally so I can hit some decent clubs.

I used to travel a lot (primarily mid-Atlantic and rustbelt/midwest), not after COVID. I don't think it's going to return anytime soon. Zoom meetings will permanently replace a lot of those face to face meetings. Not only did I travel a lot, a lot of people traveled to visit me. Before COVID, I probably averaged 4 people visiting me once a month, so that's around 48 times a year (some people would come multiple times a year out of that 48). Since March 2020, I've had 4 people come in. FOUR in a year and a half!!!!! I expected my fall to be filled up, so far I have 2 people scheduled to come in during October.

I hate to say it but a lot of things have changed in my life due to COVID, and I'm not complaining at all. I like being home more over missing the travel. I do miss the airports, the hotels, the strip clubs and the random casinos but sleeping in my own bed almost every night is really nice, and I also think COVID may have saved my marriage.

This is probably regional... its normally convention season in Vegas during the fall. It's going to impact clubs. The lack of conventions is already showing.

IMHO this is going to impact big city clubs the most, including clubs in places like NYC, Chicago, Dallas & Los Angeles. This is especially true of clubs located closest to their respective city centers, which are what I often term as "tourist trap clubs."

In smaller city clubs I believe that the impact will be more mixed as they typically have a higher ratio of locals to travelers. With that said, some of the small northern cities are also experiencing affluent population loss, so it's possible that the added loss of business travelers could be the straw that broke the camel's back for some of the clubs.

I also suspect that for certain high growth cities, transplants will more than counter-balance any loss of business travel. The clubs in Jacksonville FL, by way of one example, are busier now than they were pre-pandemic. I'm sure that the clubs in places like Miami, ATL and other Southern growth cities will also be just fine as well.

What will be really interesting is the impact on travel route clubs, i.e., clubs in places like WV, which rely upon a lot of people passing through on their way to other destinations. If Martinsburg WV is any indication, these clubs will suffer greatly and many are already folding.

Anyway, just my two cents fwiw.

I have a similar story to Shailynn (scary), in that I used to travel more than 50% of the time, across most of the Eastern part of the U.S. Most of my clubbing was done during these trips. I have taken 3 trips over the past 18 months. I imagine that is a similar story for tens of thousands of businessmen.

My clubbing is not much reduced, although the costs are way up so $ spent are not that far off. When I go into a club in my home city, there are fewer people and most of the people are older retired men. (I am a daytime guy). Dancers complain of no money on some days and that the increased prices are mostly going to the club and not to them.

Does not seem like a model that will work long term. I have to think that it will mean fewer clubs. Not a big concern to me, but the young dancers will need to figure that out.

Locally, I've seen some dancers complaining about seeing "all the same faces" every shift (knowing that one of those faces is mine...). Even though my favored club caters primarily to regulars, I believe a lot of the dancers (particularly at night) miss the turn-and-burn money offered by business travelers.

As both Rick and shailynn have mentioned, I don't believe that business travel will bounce back to its pre-COVID levels. Everyone who was reluctant to embrace online meetings have been forced to learn about and embrace them. They have also seen the cost savings over flying someone somewhere, paying for a rental car, a hotel, covering meals, etc.

Conferences may bounce back a bit, but I think that they will be smaller and many will offer some sort of "online track" for those who can't or don't want to travel. The people who travel for conferences and meetings will only be those who absolutely have to in industries where in-person contact is critical, which isn't very many.

Dancers who have historically made their money from business travelers may need to step up their game with locals and regulars.

I have never been a business traveler, but as a businessperson it appears to me that the days of mid level employee travel are mostly done, video conferencing and broad band have been chipping away at travel for years now and Covid has pretty much forced businesses to find alternate methods of servicing customers, there will always be a need for some business travel, but it will no longer be such an important economic driver.

..."have been forced to learn about and embrace them."

Embrace the new normal = Embrace the suck.

===> "As both Rick and shailynn have mentioned, I don't believe that business travel will bounce back to its pre-COVID levels. Everyone who was reluctant to embrace online meetings have been forced to learn about and embrace them."

I think that this is especially true for intracompany meetings. With software like Microsoft Teams so easy to use for "face to face" meetings and document collaboration between same-company employees, I don't see a return to big in-person company meetings. Shit many companies are allowing employees to work remotely for the foreseeable future. In my own area we have a lot of transplants who work for offices based in other parts of the country.

Now there will always be some business travel that is necessary. Institutional sales reps, client relations personnel, due diligence teams, auditors, operational and technology consultants, regional supervisors and a variety of other types will still need to travel as some things are still done much more effectively in person. I also believe that conventions and other large multi-group meeting events will return simply due to the value of in-person relationship building and information gathering - in fact they are already starting up again in certain regions.

In fact, business hotels are starting to report higher occupancy rates in places that are not traditional tourist destinations. But will it ever recover to pre-pandemic levels? I am doubtful, for the reasons stated above re: intracompany meetings. IMHO gone are the days of large company employees shuttling among their employers' various offices for group training, team meetings and other collaboration purposes.

People are dealing with some other big expenses right now. Car prices are insane. House prices have skyrocketed. How much money does one have? I think you can only bite off so much.

I used to travel regularly for work, it's extremely unlikely I'll ever return to 10% of my previous travel load. Instead of 2 trips a month I'll probably make 2 a year. I also don't have vendors or clients coming here like was a several times a month thing before as well.

It hasn't really impacted my clubbing though, I've varied up which local clubs I hit instead of hitting them up when traveling. It's hard for me to say if it's impacted clubs here. I feel like in general they're slower, but I can't really tell how much of it is due lack of business travel. I guess I could say that I see less guys in suits at clubs in the evening, which is a reasonable indicator of business travelers.

I have also noticed that a lot more of my money goes to the club than before too. They are charging covers when they never used to, and covers have mostly doubled everywhere. Rooms charges are up, so are drink prices. A few clubs have started charging fees to go into the dance areas. Girls are complaining of increased house fees and mandatory tip outs.

^^^ ah yes…

Club says “we used to make X on a normal week, now we make 30% less of X.” “What are we going to do?” “I know, double the prices on everything and create new charges on things we used to do for free!”

According to TSA, todays daily average airline passenger count is up by ~1M over 2020 levels, but 700K short of 2019 levels.

Minnow it will be interesting to see how those airline numbers look during the times that typically see a lot fewer leisure trips and used to be predominantly business travel. I imagine more folks than normal took summer vacations this year after not being able to last year and that help increase the daily passenger volume the past several months.

Times like mid-September until mid-November and mid-January until early March I used to primarily see business travelers because few people take family vacations during those times. I imagine the average number of travelers will be down by a larger percentage then.

These are all interesting and good points. Thank you.

I remember just after Sturgis there were a lot of motorcyclists hanging out in Denver, some of them who trickled into the clubs as well. Not the same quality of customers who were in Austin a few years ago for the “formula 1 of motorcycle racing” (some of those customers were British, that’s how much of a big deal it apparently was) —but they were bodies in the door at least.

Might be worth keeping track of “guy hobby” activities idk

Honestly, I’ve definitely noticed some changes in the vibe at certain clubs, especially those that used to rely on steady business travel traffic. It’s like there’s a missing layer of energy and variety. Fewer business travelers means fewer midweek events and networking gatherings, which used to keep places lively even on slow nights. On a different note, I found a great way to escape all that slowdown — yacht charters from Corfu with 12knots.com . It’s an incredible Mediterranean experience and surprisingly accessible. Highly recommend checking it out for something unforgettable.

As unforgettable as this old thread you bumped?