The diverse patterns of work-related business travel: accounting for spatial scale

In understanding workers’ work-related mobility patterns, it is more accurate to talk of mobilities, rather than mobility, as a heterogeneous range of different types and patterns of work-related travel are undertaken. It is suggested here that the spatial mobility of workers can involve undertaking quite different types of journeys on different spatial scales, and that the diverse spatial scales over which business travel occurs need to be taken greater account of. In the present paper, this is done via utilising and illustrating an existing framework on the spatial scales of business travel. This framework distinguishes between four broad scales and journey types: localised land-based travel, long distance land-based travel, short haul plane-based journeys and long haul plane-based journeys. To illustrate the type of journeys undertaken at each spatial scale, empirical data is drawn from a study of UK business travellers involving journeys undertaken by car, plane, and train. A number of illustrative vignettes are presented which give rich insights into the various types of workers who regularly travel for work, the type of journeys they undertake, and some of the key impacts that their work and travel patterns have on their non-work lives.