Business customers may be turning to cheap flights in order to continue making trips to see clients.

Through undertaking cost-cutting measures, more businesses now turn to cheap flights for their air travel. New figures from Visa Europe indicate that while spending on flights fell toward the end of last year, expenditure on such travel has now gone up again.

Businesses cannot stop all their travel plans to be more eco-friendly, one expert has claimed, which may interest companies looking to book cheap winter flights.

Margaret Hansen, global procurement director of corporate travel at AT Kearney, said that companies now operated within a global economy which meant that they were unlikely not to travel.

Employees of small and medium-sized businesses are set to travel as part of their job at least as much in 2009 as they have been this year, new research has found.

According to online resource TravelMole, the Star Alliance poll revealed that 52 per cent said they would be commuting just as frequently over the next 12 months, with 34 per cent claiming they will be flying more than they did in 2008.

Low-cost airlines are "most definitely" going to become the alternative for business travel in the future, one sector commentator has claimed.

Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, explained that in this marketplace, many large international companies were already choosing to fly in this way.