More TSA PreCheck love + Expense Reports + Longer trips

PreCheck makes life easier, a survey finds. (Image: TSA)

PreCheck makes life easier, a new survey finds. (Image: TSA)

A new survey of business travelers confirms what many already know: That enrolling in the Transportation Security Administration’s PreCheck program makes life a lot easier.

That mirrors the results of our own recent reader survey, which gave positive marks to PreCheck from those who belong to it.

The new survey, from the Global Business Travel Association, finds that PreCheck membership impacts not only a road warrior’s satisfaction with the airport security experience, but also with his or her flight.

It found that fully two-thirds of travelers enrolled in PreCheck expressed satisfaction with the way they moved through airport security, vs. only 47 percent who do not belong to the expedited screening program. Two-thirds of PreCheck enrollees also expressed satisfaction with their flight experience, vs. 54 percent of non-members.

Of the surveyed business travelers who are already in PreCheck, those age 55-plus showed a much greater participation rate than others: 51 percent of those Boomer travelers are in PreCheck, compared with 37 percent of GenXers (age 35-54) and only 32 percent of Millennials (18-34).

On other subjects, the poll found that business travelers are increasingly satisfied with the formerly odious task of expense reporting, no doubt thanks to the adoption of digital tools for that task by their employers. Surprisingly, Boomers seem to be adapting to the new electronic expense reporting environment better than the supposedly tech-savvy younger crowd. Four-fifths of Boomer business travelers said they were very satisfied with the way they keep track of receipts, and 74 percent said the same about expense reporting; for Millennials, the comparable figures were 59 percent and 55 percent.

One thing the Millennial road warriors excel at is extending a business trip for leisure purposes: 43 percent of them said they had done so recently,. compared with about a third of Boomers and GenXers.

In other findings, GBTA said convenient scheduling continues to be the most important single factor in a business traveler’s selection and booking of flights, cited by 33 percent of those surveyed, with price in second place (27 percent) and frequent flyer program considerations in third (20 percent). And almost half said that their company requires them to follow its travel policy guidelines when booking trips.