Business Travel is 16 Percent of All U.S. Long-Distance Trips; ‘Business Class’ is Usually the Driver’s Seat, New BTS Report Says

Contact BTS 25-03 Roger Lotz 202-366-2246

Monday, November 3, 2003 - Sixteen percent of U.S. trips of more than 50 miles from home are for business, according to a new report on National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) findings released today by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).

“America on the Go… U.S. Business Travel,” reports that more than 405 million long-distance business trips are taken each year in the U.S. Four out of five business trips are taken by automobile, making the driver’s seat the preferred form of “business class travel.” Almost three out of four business trips are less than 250 miles and only one out of 14 business trips is more than 1,000 miles.

This joint project of the BTS and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), also found:

• 81 percent of long-distance business trips in the U.S. are taken by personal vehicle;
• The average one-way distance for a business trip is 123 miles, longer than for any other trip purpose; and
• Air travel accounts for 16 percent of all business travel.

The report profiles the typical business traveler as:

• Male – men make 77 percent of business trips;
• Age 30 to 49 – this age group takes 55 percent of business trips;
• A professional, managerial or technical worker – people in these occupations take 53 percent of business trips; and
• Having a household income of more than $75,000 – people in this income group make 45 percent of business trips.

The NHTS, conducted in 2001 and 2002, gives a picture of travel in the U.S. at the start of the 21st century. Combining new long-distance travel information with short-distance data released earlier this year, it is the most comprehensive survey of travel in the United States since 1995 — offering information on who travels, why they travel, where they travel and how they travel. For this report, only the long-distance trip data from the NHTS was analyzed.

The NHTS collected information about a wide range of topics, including the amount and purpose of travel, the uses of different travel modes, time and miles spent traveling and the ownership and use of vehicles in the United States. It also examines the relationships between travel and specific household and demographic characteristics. Over the next several months, BTS and FHWA will be releasing additional NHTS data on these and other areas.

For this survey a nationally representative sample of about 26,000 households was contacted and 60,000 individuals were interviewed. The NHTS is the successor to the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey and American Travel Survey.

“America on the Go… U.S. Business Travel”, findings from the National Household Travel Survey can be found at www.bts.gov. Quick Facts on Business Travel are also available.