Domestic Business Travel in Canada with a Focus on the Female Market

Abstract

Female business travel is an understudied phenomenon. However, in the year 2000 women took over 5.8 million domestic business trips in Canada alone. Using data from the 2000 Canadian Travel Survey, the findings of this study indicate that female domestic business travelers are quite different than their male counterparts. Female domestic business travelers tend to be younger, unmarried and do more ‘outside’ activities while traveling. In a further examination of women and business travel using a cluster analysis, it was found that three types of women business travelers exist: ‘mixing business and pleasure’ (34%), a ‘directed’ business traveler (19%) and the ‘frequent’ business traveler (44%). These results indicate that women business travelers are more likely to extend their trip and engage in more touristic activities while traveling for business purposes.

Key Words:

• Gender
• business travel
• Canadian travel survey
• cluster analysis