Business travellers miss language, home cooking

Aside from missing their families and home, business travellers globally reveal that they can’t do without their home cooking and native idiom, according to the latest survey by Regus, the global flexible workplace provider. A quarter of business people (25%) report that homemade food is among the top three things they miss when travelling for work.
When travelling abroad for business, respondents globally reported that after family (68%) and their home (38%), they are most likely to be hit by a bout of nostalgia over home cooking (25%), rather than savouring the delights of a foreign cuisine. One in five respondents (17%) also longs to speak in their own language, highlighting that some home-comforts really are irreplaceable in making people feel they belong.
Unsurprisingly, 20% of Brazilians miss their glorious weather, while 19% of technological Japanese find the standard of living in other countries is not up to scratch and 35% of Mexicans are particularly likely to miss home cooking.
Globally, generation X and Baby Boomers are less likely to be willing to travel for work with family commitments taking their toll, while generation X, most likely to have young children, is the most likely to miss their family (73%);
A quarter of respondents (26%) are less willing than they were ten years ago to be parted from their home comforts in favour of travelling for business.
Analysing the results, Regus explained that “face-to-face meetings have often been a key part of business as people need to see the expressions and body language of those they are talking to, but workers also find that over the years their priorities change. New technologies that allow workers to hold video conferences are becoming more and more common and employees are rightly starting to demand that these be offered as an alternative to travel.”
“Reducing unnecessary travel also helps the bottom line: it significantly reduces costs and carbon footprint. By introducing a greater degree of video conferencing, businesses can have their cake and eat it too: they can save money and the environment, as well as helping increase employee satisfaction and improve their work-life balance,” Regus concluded.