Are business travelers using mobile getting Groupon crazy?

Has Groupon and the voucher craze in general seeped into the psyche of smartphone-wielding road warriors?

That sort of metamorphosis comes to mind with the results of a new Sabre mobile survey of business travelers.

The survey found that 63% of business travel respondents indicated they want to receive “destination-specific offers from local businesses.”

And, that response represents an 85% jump from Sabre’s prior survey in 2009.

Since 2009, flash sales offers from the likes of Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers, Travelzoo, Bing mobile and Priceline — the list of providers is seemingly endless — have permeated the marketplace.

It would be astounding if the voucher craze and hunger for daily deals hasn’t slipped into the mindset of business travelers, too.

Which doesn’t mean road warriors are clamoring to buy $99 vouchers for face-and-neck tightening treatments, but perhaps business travelers are becoming more receptive to local advertising.

Or, as Sabre notes about the survey: “The results confirm that the explosion of mobile travel services over the past several years has single-handedly ‘consumerized’ business travel.”

In fact, 47% of business travelers surveyed noted that they use their smartphones every day to receive or peruse advertisements — and that’s a 95% increase from the 2009 survey.

So, whether it’s the voucher craze, improvements in targeted and mobile advertising or the “explosion of mobile” in general, business travelers seem to have been softened up into becoming more receptive targets of advertising, local or otherwise.

And, the repercussions could be long-lasting.

There could be a parallel to the days when business travelers suddenly began seeing low-cost carriers as a viable option — something that is taken for granted today.

Other findings of the business traveler survey about mobile include:

• 72% of business travelers want to view hotels on maps, a 26% increase since the 2009 survey

• 43% of road warriors use their mobile devices to access navigation services;

• 71% of business travelers want to receive driving directions to a specific spot on their smartphone; and

• Business travelers want to shop for rental cars (60%) or book rental cars (62%) on their smartphones. Both of those numbers increased about one-third, and surpassed increases about the desire to shop and book flights and hotels on mobile devices.

Related posts:

1. TripIt: iPad beats Kindle for business travelers
2. Study: Impact of mobile on business travel
3. Google: US mobile travel bookers use browsers over apps