According to the survey, 18 percent of business travelers still say their future business-travel plans will continue to be affected by the events of September 11—almost the identical result (19 percent) noted in similar surveys conducted by YPB in October and November.

"It appears that the demand for business travel services will recover more slowly than demand for leisure-travel services," said YPB President Peter Yesawich. "The drop in demand for business-travel services that we observed right after the tragedy of September 11th appears to have abated, however, with slightly less than 20 percent of business travelers still stating their future travel plans are likely to be affected." (A YPB survey conducted September 12 showed that 33 percent of respondents said the terrorist attacks would influence their business travel plans.)

Among respondents who said their business travel plans would continue to be affected by the terrorist events, about six of ten (57 percent) said they would drive rather than fly whenever they could—a decline of 12 percentage points from the November YPB survey, but about the same as the September and October surveys. About 41 percent of the January survey respondents said they would take fewer international trips, 37 percent said they would cancel a future international business trip, and 24 percent said they would cancel a future domestic business trip. These percentages are comparable to those recorded on the same measures in the November survey.

The same percentage of respondents in October and January (28 percent) said they believe it is not safe to fly.

Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown is a marketing, advertising and public relations firm based in Orlando.