The number of business trips is on the rise again
According to Isfort, the impact of smart working has stabilised while leisure travel is decreasing
Mobility for work is growing and smart working is stabilising, not to say retreating. We move a little less for leisure and more and more for professional travel, with all the implications of the case for the strategies of mobility managers. According to the 22nd Isfort report on the mobility of Italians, entitled 'Eppur si muove', it appears that the Galilean observation is very much linked to the working environment. 33.6% of the journeys made in Italy in the first six months of 2025 were for work purposes, up from 32.3% in the same period of 2024, while those for leisure purposes fell slightly, from 29.4% in the first six months of 2024 to 28.8% in the first six months of 2025. Long gone is the sudden wave of remote working experienced during the pandemic, smart working has nevertheless retained a certain weight, especially in large enterprises and extended urban areas. According to the most recent estimates of the Smart Working Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic, the current number of Italian remote workers has stabilised at around 3.5 million. However, as Istat also recently underlined, smart working has not had the same impact in all sectors of the Italian economy. In those with a high technological content it has more easily become an integral part of company organisation; in those linked to manufacturing it is instead a marginal alternative, because it is difficult to apply in practice. In Milan, more than 38 per cent of the employed can work from home, in Rome and Bologna just under one in three, and in Catania and Messina about one in ten. According to the same report, working remotely could not only reduce traffic, thanks to fewer personal car journeys, but also contribute to the decline in public transport subscriptions. For this reason, it is strategic to relaunch the figure of the mobility manager and home-work travel plans: tools such as company shuttles, vouchers for sustainable mobility or subsidised subscriptions to local public transport could be an answer to balance different needs.
