7 ms·

Technologies could hold back business travel

30 points by prostoalex 6y ago

Mandatum 6y ago
In Australia we've gone back to normal entirely except for institutions that face public scrutiny if you go back too early (universities, government, some tech companies - the former just announced they'll start sending people back). Everyone else is back at work if you didn't have the option of working remotely in the past. People have more leeway to occasionally work from home, but it's pretty much business as usual. US will follow the same once COVID dies down. Nothing will change except some companies will have more lenient WFH policies.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Except there are still no overseas travel, and there probably wont be for years.
  - f6v 6y ago
    I’m pretty sure the whole travel industry is pushing for opening the borders as high as it can. Some European countries open up despite no improvements. And everyone knows international travel is the real money-maker. Israel is going to be open in the next months for that matter.
  - jryle70 6y ago
    Years? Both Italy [0] and France [1] are considering open to vaccinated visitors, Europeans or Americans, in May. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-20/italy-targets-mid-may-opening-for-tourism-in-bid-to-save-sector https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-20/italy-tar... [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/19/france-americans-europe-vaccine-summer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/19/france-amer...
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I expect it will be years. Australia's vacation program is going very slowly. I'm also led to believe that the vaccine doesn't prevent you from carrying the disease, it just reduces your symptoms making it less deadly. We are seeing reports now of vaccinated people getting positive test results.
  - Mandatum 6y ago
    In this part of the world there already is (trans-tasman) and holiday bookings will be immediate once mandatory quarantine drops for certified vaccinated people.
Aloha 6y ago
I think the breathless articles going around about the death of business travel are both premature and wildly overstated. Business travel will return, probably at 60-80% the level of before the pandemic, a lot of the 'useless trips' travel will go away (maintaining existing business relationships, smaller training sessions, some tech support support trips) but zoom (et, al) is not a replacement for a face to face meetings and collaboration. I think in the interim you'll see folks doing long term project work wanting to take fewer longer trips.
- paxys 6y ago
  I'd say the "useless trips" you mention made up WAY more than 20% of total business travel pre-pandemic.
tjr225 6y ago
Seems like a good thing. Leisure travel seems more critical than business travel if business travel isn’t necessary- and I think most of us would be hard pressed to give up leisure travel. Don’t make me burn jet fuel for work if it’s not necessary.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  But business travel pays the bills at the airlines and hotels. Business travelers don't quibble over fares and rates compared to leisure travelers. Leisure travelers will comparison shop to save $10 on a flight, which results in a race to the bottom for their business.
  - 01100011 6y ago
    But business travel costs businesses money and they then have to charge more, inflating the costs of a number of goods and services. I'm happy to pay more for a vacation if it means nearly everything else I buy costs less.
  - ragebol 6y ago
    Maybe this will trigger less leisure flights too since those will have to become more expensive to pay the airline's bills. Which could be better for the environment as well. Maybe...
- stepbeek 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on why leisure travel is more critical?
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    You can replace most business travel with technology, zoom etc. You can't replace leisure in the same way
aledalgrande 6y ago
Isn't frequent business travel a health risk anyway? [1] [1] https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-health-risks-of-business-travel https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-health-risks-of-business-travel
- f6v 6y ago
  Radiation exposure aside, I don’t see how you can establish a causal relationship. It might as well be that people who choose a travel-heavy job already have unhealthy lifestyles. As usual, association doesn’t mean causation.
tluyben2 6y ago
Before Covid I was flying EU<>Asia<>US all the time because clients and partners believed it was really the only way to work and get things across the line. Everything ticked along better and cheaper during Covid, so the assumption that it only would work if we met was essentially wrong for most things (even investments and sales, which the sales peeps really did not expect). So now no-one will be travelling regularly anymore; just once or twice a year to have a drink with everyone in the company and that's it. Not sure how common this is, however friends at companies I know see the same thing.
- jkaptur 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see to what extent work travel is sort of a prisoner's dilemma: if we all just stay home, then, as you say, everything ticks along better and cheaper, but if it benefits someone to "defect" and travel, then everyone will have to travel, even though it's expensive and leads to worse outcomes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Zoom meetings work because everyone is on Zoom. When it becomes a group in a room and someone on the board, I suspect the dynamic will change.
    - wolfpack_mick 6y ago
      I could imagine the commenter you're responding to also means the companies you're competing with for sales. Not just employees in the same company.
- jshmrsn 6y ago
  If a potential customer is pitched by two sales teams, one who “showed commitment by showing up” and were humanized with friendly in-person communication, and another sales team who only called in on Zoom from hundreds/thousands of miles away with 500ms latency for a stale conversation and awkward interruptions, which sales team is likely to get picked all else roughly equal? All of those downsides are currently hand-waived away as unavoidable at the moment, but soon they will be blamed on the party who isn’t willing to travel.
renewiltord 6y ago
Curious to see if leisure will see an increase in price as a result.
nostromo 6y ago
I’d happily take a bet on the opposite. When nobody is traveling to meet customers and make sales, it makes no difference. When your competitors start visiting your customers to make a sale, your company will be right behind them. These solutions are sort of ok during a pandemic, but otherwise no replacement for meeting in person.
- onion2k 6y ago
  otherwise no replacement for meeting in person I think the point is that the pandemic has proven these solutions are a replacement for in person meetings. People might prefer to meet in person, but we now know and have evidence that they don't have to in order to get stuff done. In any price sensitive market that will have a long lasting impact.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    They are a replacement out of necessity, but a poor substitute.
    - paxys 6y ago
      That is very subjective. A large chunk of companies looking at the prospect of paying for 2X flights and 5 nights at a hotel every week for their consultants are going to realize that they got the same value for their money working with them on Zoom.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    I suspect it all depends on the nature of the meeting, and the industry's experience in the pandemic. I agree your everyday travel for face-to-face meetings - the type I, as a programmer, end up doing - may be entirely replaced. But if the travel was for sales? Can't take the client out for a fancy lunch via teleconference. If you were travelling to do repairs or similar hands-on work? Can't replace the base joint on that robot arm over teleconference. If it was a jolly, like when you send people to a conference in a luxury hotel in an exotic location? Can't have your executives spend the evening lounging by the pool drinking mojitos over teleconference. If the purpose was to be visible, to ensure the people at the satellite office know they're as important to the boss as all the people at head office who see her every day? Might work over teleconference, might not, hard to say.
NoPicklez 6y ago
I'm not sure what to think on the topic, working at a large firm during COVID we shifted from working fairly remotely at client sites or the office to working from home. Now that COVID is almost non-existent here we have started to go back to the norm of working in the office and at client sites if need be. As a result I am still working in the office and visiting clients for key meetings however most of them are held virtually, which relieves a fair bit of the burden from both sides. However, for interstate travel it had been reduced drastically, training is now all provided virtually and interstate meetings are all held virtually. I think eventually we will go back to our normal ways but in a reduced capacity for only important requirements.
jedberg 6y ago
Sort of two minds on this. I like the fact that I don't have to spend a day traveling and pay for an hotel. I also like that my impact to the planet is much smaller. However, almost every vacation I take is tied to work related travel. If I go to a meeting 1/2 around the world, I arrange to take my wife and kids with me and go a week early. My part of the travel is picked up by someone else, and then the whole family gets a great trip. I doubt my kids would have seen Africa if not for the work trip I took to Cape Town. And then after all that, the work travel gets me miles and hotel points so I can take a real vacation. That is the part I will miss the most. All the free (to me at least) travel.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  Yeah, there's an invisible perk here which is being lost.
lordnacho 6y ago
I think for some meetings yes, remote is best. Existing relationships, internal team coordination meetings, small ticket business, yes. A lot of those meetings are tedious anyway and it's nice to be both in them and able to do something else at the same time. But for new big ticket business I think it's hard to replace the in person meeting. The ritual of going somewhere new to meet someone new to do something new is probably not going away, and it seems likely that people will agree that there's a comfort in it. You need a bit of commitment in new relationships, it can't all be speed dating from your home office.
noyesno 6y ago
Travel brings people to the same time zone, you cannot replicate that with technology. If you want to have a week-long meeting with large group of people from all around the globe, a face-to-face meeting is the only efficient option. The only substitutes are asynchronous communication methods (emails etc.) and those are much slower than dealing with people in "real-time".
- 01100011 6y ago
  What about jet lag? You can fly someone to the same time zone, but you can't immediately make their brain work on local time. Personally, I'm happier waking up at an odd hour to jump on a video conference than I am spending 24+ hours commuting to accomplish the same thing. Also, I'm not generating tons of CO2 in the process.
  - noyesno 6y ago
    The solution is to fly in a day or two early. Meeting starts on Monday, you'll land on location on the previous Saturday. If you have to reverse your sleeping cycle for 8h video calls happening at your night-time for 5 days, I don't really see how that is any better than suffering from jet lag for a day or two.
- f6v 6y ago
  I’m trying to schedule a regular meeting with a guy in South Korea. With a 7 hour difference it’s always such a hassle.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/DOsnz https://archive.is/DOsnz
marcind 6y ago
Two companies I've worked in/with used to fly folks from distributed teams to meet for a few days and brainstorm. They found the process of shared white boarding to be worth it. Necessity inspired our team to create https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com - since then we've found BOTH a drop in such cases (fly to whiteboard) AND an increase in shared (remote) white boarding. That said, I don't believe business travel will ever go away - it's built into the process, as long as humans are running the place.

30 points by prostoalex 6y ago

In Australia we've gone back to normal entirely except for institutions that face public scrutiny if you go back too early (universities, government, some tech companies - the former just announced they'll start sending people back). Everyone else is back at work if you didn't have the option of working remotely in the past. People have more leeway to occasionally work from home, but it's pretty much business as usual. US will follow the same once COVID dies down. Nothing will change except some companies will have more lenient WFH policies.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Except there are still no overseas travel, and there probably wont be for years.
- f6v 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure the whole travel industry is pushing for opening the borders as high as it can. Some European countries open up despite no improvements. And everyone knows international travel is the real money-maker. Israel is going to be open in the next months for that matter.
- jryle70 6y ago
  Years? Both Italy [0] and France [1] are considering open to vaccinated visitors, Europeans or Americans, in May. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-20/italy-targets-mid-may-opening-for-tourism-in-bid-to-save-sector https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-20/italy-tar... [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/19/france-americans-europe-vaccine-summer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/19/france-amer...
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    I expect it will be years. Australia's vacation program is going very slowly. I'm also led to believe that the vaccine doesn't prevent you from carrying the disease, it just reduces your symptoms making it less deadly. We are seeing reports now of vaccinated people getting positive test results.
- Mandatum 6y ago
  In this part of the world there already is (trans-tasman) and holiday bookings will be immediate once mandatory quarantine drops for certified vaccinated people.

Aloha 6y ago

I think the breathless articles going around about the death of business travel are both premature and wildly overstated. Business travel will return, probably at 60-80% the level of before the pandemic, a lot of the 'useless trips' travel will go away (maintaining existing business relationships, smaller training sessions, some tech support support trips) but zoom (et, al) is not a replacement for a face to face meetings and collaboration. I think in the interim you'll see folks doing long term project work wanting to take fewer longer trips.

paxys 6y ago
I'd say the "useless trips" you mention made up WAY more than 20% of total business travel pre-pandemic.

tjr225 6y ago

Seems like a good thing. Leisure travel seems more critical than business travel if business travel isn’t necessary- and I think most of us would be hard pressed to give up leisure travel. Don’t make me burn jet fuel for work if it’s not necessary.

throwawayboise 6y ago
But business travel pays the bills at the airlines and hotels. Business travelers don't quibble over fares and rates compared to leisure travelers. Leisure travelers will comparison shop to save $10 on a flight, which results in a race to the bottom for their business.
- 01100011 6y ago
  But business travel costs businesses money and they then have to charge more, inflating the costs of a number of goods and services. I'm happy to pay more for a vacation if it means nearly everything else I buy costs less.
- ragebol 6y ago
  Maybe this will trigger less leisure flights too since those will have to become more expensive to pay the airline's bills. Which could be better for the environment as well. Maybe...
stepbeek 6y ago
Can you elaborate on why leisure travel is more critical?
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  You can replace most business travel with technology, zoom etc. You can't replace leisure in the same way

aledalgrande 6y ago

Isn't frequent business travel a health risk anyway? [1] [1] https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-health-risks-of-business-travel https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-health-risks-of-business-travel

f6v 6y ago
Radiation exposure aside, I don’t see how you can establish a causal relationship. It might as well be that people who choose a travel-heavy job already have unhealthy lifestyles. As usual, association doesn’t mean causation.

tluyben2 6y ago

Before Covid I was flying EU<>Asia<>US all the time because clients and partners believed it was really the only way to work and get things across the line. Everything ticked along better and cheaper during Covid, so the assumption that it only would work if we met was essentially wrong for most things (even investments and sales, which the sales peeps really did not expect). So now no-one will be travelling regularly anymore; just once or twice a year to have a drink with everyone in the company and that's it. Not sure how common this is, however friends at companies I know see the same thing.

jkaptur 6y ago
It will be interesting to see to what extent work travel is sort of a prisoner's dilemma: if we all just stay home, then, as you say, everything ticks along better and cheaper, but if it benefits someone to "defect" and travel, then everyone will have to travel, even though it's expensive and leads to worse outcomes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Zoom meetings work because everyone is on Zoom. When it becomes a group in a room and someone on the board, I suspect the dynamic will change.
  - wolfpack_mick 6y ago
    I could imagine the commenter you're responding to also means the companies you're competing with for sales. Not just employees in the same company.
jshmrsn 6y ago
If a potential customer is pitched by two sales teams, one who “showed commitment by showing up” and were humanized with friendly in-person communication, and another sales team who only called in on Zoom from hundreds/thousands of miles away with 500ms latency for a stale conversation and awkward interruptions, which sales team is likely to get picked all else roughly equal? All of those downsides are currently hand-waived away as unavoidable at the moment, but soon they will be blamed on the party who isn’t willing to travel.

renewiltord 6y ago

Curious to see if leisure will see an increase in price as a result.

nostromo 6y ago

I’d happily take a bet on the opposite. When nobody is traveling to meet customers and make sales, it makes no difference. When your competitors start visiting your customers to make a sale, your company will be right behind them. These solutions are sort of ok during a pandemic, but otherwise no replacement for meeting in person.

onion2k 6y ago
otherwise no replacement for meeting in person I think the point is that the pandemic has proven these solutions are a replacement for in person meetings. People might prefer to meet in person, but we now know and have evidence that they don't have to in order to get stuff done. In any price sensitive market that will have a long lasting impact.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  They are a replacement out of necessity, but a poor substitute.
  - paxys 6y ago
    That is very subjective. A large chunk of companies looking at the prospect of paying for 2X flights and 5 nights at a hotel every week for their consultants are going to realize that they got the same value for their money working with them on Zoom.
- michaelt 6y ago
  I suspect it all depends on the nature of the meeting, and the industry's experience in the pandemic. I agree your everyday travel for face-to-face meetings - the type I, as a programmer, end up doing - may be entirely replaced. But if the travel was for sales? Can't take the client out for a fancy lunch via teleconference. If you were travelling to do repairs or similar hands-on work? Can't replace the base joint on that robot arm over teleconference. If it was a jolly, like when you send people to a conference in a luxury hotel in an exotic location? Can't have your executives spend the evening lounging by the pool drinking mojitos over teleconference. If the purpose was to be visible, to ensure the people at the satellite office know they're as important to the boss as all the people at head office who see her every day? Might work over teleconference, might not, hard to say.

NoPicklez 6y ago

I'm not sure what to think on the topic, working at a large firm during COVID we shifted from working fairly remotely at client sites or the office to working from home. Now that COVID is almost non-existent here we have started to go back to the norm of working in the office and at client sites if need be. As a result I am still working in the office and visiting clients for key meetings however most of them are held virtually, which relieves a fair bit of the burden from both sides. However, for interstate travel it had been reduced drastically, training is now all provided virtually and interstate meetings are all held virtually. I think eventually we will go back to our normal ways but in a reduced capacity for only important requirements.

jedberg 6y ago

Sort of two minds on this. I like the fact that I don't have to spend a day traveling and pay for an hotel. I also like that my impact to the planet is much smaller. However, almost every vacation I take is tied to work related travel. If I go to a meeting 1/2 around the world, I arrange to take my wife and kids with me and go a week early. My part of the travel is picked up by someone else, and then the whole family gets a great trip. I doubt my kids would have seen Africa if not for the work trip I took to Cape Town. And then after all that, the work travel gets me miles and hotel points so I can take a real vacation. That is the part I will miss the most. All the free (to me at least) travel.

throwaway3699 6y ago
Yeah, there's an invisible perk here which is being lost.

lordnacho 6y ago

I think for some meetings yes, remote is best. Existing relationships, internal team coordination meetings, small ticket business, yes. A lot of those meetings are tedious anyway and it's nice to be both in them and able to do something else at the same time. But for new big ticket business I think it's hard to replace the in person meeting. The ritual of going somewhere new to meet someone new to do something new is probably not going away, and it seems likely that people will agree that there's a comfort in it. You need a bit of commitment in new relationships, it can't all be speed dating from your home office.

noyesno 6y ago

Travel brings people to the same time zone, you cannot replicate that with technology. If you want to have a week-long meeting with large group of people from all around the globe, a face-to-face meeting is the only efficient option. The only substitutes are asynchronous communication methods (emails etc.) and those are much slower than dealing with people in "real-time".

01100011 6y ago
What about jet lag? You can fly someone to the same time zone, but you can't immediately make their brain work on local time. Personally, I'm happier waking up at an odd hour to jump on a video conference than I am spending 24+ hours commuting to accomplish the same thing. Also, I'm not generating tons of CO2 in the process.
- noyesno 6y ago
  The solution is to fly in a day or two early. Meeting starts on Monday, you'll land on location on the previous Saturday. If you have to reverse your sleeping cycle for 8h video calls happening at your night-time for 5 days, I don't really see how that is any better than suffering from jet lag for a day or two.
f6v 6y ago
I’m trying to schedule a regular meeting with a guy in South Korea. With a 7 hour difference it’s always such a hassle.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/DOsnz https://archive.is/DOsnz

marcind 6y ago

Two companies I've worked in/with used to fly folks from distributed teams to meet for a few days and brainstorm. They found the process of shared white boarding to be worth it. Necessity inspired our team to create https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com - since then we've found BOTH a drop in such cases (fly to whiteboard) AND an increase in shared (remote) white boarding. That said, I don't believe business travel will ever go away - it's built into the process, as long as humans are running the place.