When you travel for business, you likely have a favorite airline, hotel, restaurant and so forth.
Certify’s latest report on the habits of business travelers shows that Seattle-area companies Starbucks and Alaska Airlines are quite popular with the business set, but probably the biggest gainer is San Francisco-based Uber. The ride-share service is taking over for the taxi as the get-around-town vehicle of choice.
According to Certify, in the first quarter of 2015 an “average 46 percent of all total paid car rides were through Uber, compared with 15 percent in Q1 of 2014.” In a year, cabs dropped from 85 percent of rides in 2014 to an average of 53 percent by Q1 of 2015. Ouch.
Check out Uber’s meteoric rise among business travelers below:
The New York Times also did a recent piece on the trend of work-related travel leaning toward services like Uber and Lyft, the companies having also introduced programs to entice business travelers.
Other notable takeaways from Certify’s Q1 report was Starbucks coming in as the most expensed restaurant. Accounting for 5.32 percent of receipts averaging $12.22, it was well ahead of second-place McDonald’s at 2.56 percent and $7.91. Starbucks is also the No. 1 place for business travel breakfast with 13.74 percent of the market share.
Alaska Airlines came in right behind Jet Blue in the top-rated airlines category, with a rating of 4.4 out of 5, just missing a tie with Jet Blue’s 4.5 star rating.
Certify’s SpendSmart Report gets its data from analyzing vendors, expenses and satisfaction ratings on expense reports. All told, it’s a pretty fascinating look into the world of business travel, loyalty and preferences.
