Do you travel more often for business, or pleasure? When I think of traveling, I think of discovering new places, exploring new lands, and indulging in everything a new location has to offer. I work from home, so traveling for business usually means picking the kids up from school. I don't often associate business travel with "traveling."

But many of you do, and plenty of my readers only travel when it is business. This means you know that in the past three years, business travel has been on the decline. Thanks to the recession, corporations and companies have needed to cut back on employees and expenses. Company retreats and events dwindled dramatically; business heads knew they couldn't continue to send their employees on to such luxuries in a time of bail outs, even if they weren't recipients.

Slowly but surely things are turning around. New reports are showing a slight increase in all areas...airline usage, hotel bookings, and relationship-building corporate retreats. While the upswing is promising, companies are still encouraging their travelers to travel frugally and keep stays short. Quite frankly, this is a suggestion that could have well suited them over a decade ago. Perhaps a lesson will be learned...or will we see extravagant spending back on the horizon before too long?