Intentionally vague title to try to avoid bias via self selection.
Background: I work, or used to work, for an airline. It’s CEO has expressed his concern that “business travel will never return to pre COVID levels because Zoom.” (Not a real quote but a reasonable paraphrase.)
The question is, assuming you used to use airlines to travel for business meetings, and this travel stopped due to COVID restrictions (no matter what they were specifically), do you anticipate a return to business travel or not. I would like to know what you think WILL happen, not what you would LIKE to happen. For example, if you don’t like video conferencing and would like to meet in person but know that your company is likely to continue video conferencing, then you should select option 1.
I use video conferencing during COVID restrictions and DON’T anticipate flying again for business meetings.
I use video conferencing during COVID restrictions and DO anticipate flying again for business meetings.
Er, whatever is closest. “Greatly reduced” would be option 1.
I’m interested in personal experiences, for example “I’ve used Zoom and think it is great, however I expect my company will generally continue using air travel to facilitate face to face meetings.”
I’m retired and I haven’t done work-related travel in more than a decade, but even back then, video conferences were not entirely unheard of, and I loved them! It always seemed stupid to need a 3-day block to attend a 2-hour meeting. And with air fare, hotel, meals, local transportation, and being paid to sit in a plane or in an airport, I didn’t understand how that was value for the dollar.
Maybe I was missing something, but I think ZOOM, etc, should be the standard. Not that it matters to me personally.
I’ve worked from home for the past 6 years. The team I’m in is spread across 3 countries. We use Microsoft Teams for audio calls (not video) 3 times a week. I used to travel to the head office in Canada about every 2 years but I don’t expect those meetings to start happening again.
My company was fairly far ahead of the curve on teleconferencing/remote meetings before COVID (like video conference equipment in every conference room, including a bunch of single-person conference rooms just to remote into other sites). There was still significant travel. Like a couple of trips a year for a “normal” guy like me, and a great deal more for project managers, &c.
I’ve been doing a lot of video (and/or audio) conferencing for work for the past five years or so, as not only are most of the clients with whom I work not local, but my team is spread out over the U.S. (plus team members in Canada and India).
Prior to COVID, I was probably traveling for business every one to two months, nearly always for face-to-face meetings with clients. I haven’t been on a plane since February, but I’m now on conference calls for at least 3 hours every work day. (In fact, I’m currently on a break from a series of planning meetings with my primary client, which has been going all week; if not for the virus, I would have been down in Alabama, at their HQ, all week for these.)
I anticipate that, at some point in the future, we will get back to some level of business travel, but I do imagine that it’ll be lower than it used to be. Honestly, after 31 years of traveling for work, I’d be perfectly happy to never do so again, but that may not be an option.
Similar to kenobi_65, my usual work is client projects involving regular travel to the client sites. Before covid, the pattern was to spend a period of time onsite to gather requirements and transfer knowledge, followed by remote work with occasional onsite visits.
I had worked for a big accounting consultancy that had funded an academic study on the most effective use of remote working teams, and their finding was the pattern described above - start out with a short period of face-to-face prior to remote work. This supported establishing good lines of communication, team dynamics, meeting cadences, white-boarding processes, etc.
I must confess I would be concerned about trying to do projects completely remote, without the initial face-to-face interaction time. Yes, ZOOM allows you to see faces, and there are a multitude of desktop sharing tools, etc., but it’s just not the same, yah?
I too anticipate that there will be some level of business travel, although reduced.
I travel a lot to sites for work and while we use zoom while everything is shut down we’re not able to accomplish 80% of my normal work. Sure face to face meetings are gone but standing in front of a still and teaching people how to operate it and what to taste for or feel is impossible. I was supposed to go down and spend two weeks teaching a client how to operate their new facility and instead we’ve been emailing for months and they are still mostly confused.
I’m working on planning a new production facility and while CAD can show the dimensions of a space walking it really affects how many mistakes the instillation team will have to correct for. I’ve been to expensive to pay to travel for a while unless it was something that can’t be replaced so I’d guess my travel ends up being about the same which would be monthly or so.
I averaged 12-15 business trips per year before this. I expect that to be 3-4 per year when things return to normal. The last few months have been a great learning experience for my company about what things can be effectively done remotely and what still benefits from face-to-face. We realized “just jump on a place” was the easy answer that we were taking too often.
We used conferencing to reduce travel even before Covid, back a few years ago.
Now, our meeting planner said that surveys they’ve done show that most people want to go back to face-to-face conferences when this is over, primarily for networking, but I wonder if companies will pressure conferences to use a cheaper virtual option.
Now that everyone is used to video-conferencing, I can see travel being much reduced, as stop in and chat sales calls will be virtual, which saves everyone a lot of time.
I have traveled for business in the past. Usually for a certification class in one thing or another. Just a few weeks ago, we did a webinar for Lifefitness training. Much less retention without being able to do hands on training with the actual equipment. As others have said, some level will most likely return, but probably not as much since somethings are perfectly amenable to virtual meetings.
Thanks for all of your responses. We are finding, here in New Zealand, that domestic leisure travel has rebounded quicker than anticipated and has actually been stronger than this time last year. Business is slower to come back, but that was expected. Meanwhile international travel is essentially non existent for obvious reasons.
My thought has been that video conferencing is great when there is no alternative but that most people would much rather have face to face meetings. I mentioned this to our rather pessimistic CEO and, although he agreed with me, he made the point that it’s not necessarily the people having the meetings who decide how to have them. If the accountants can see savings in video conferencing, that’s what they will push for.
Answering the question as written, I have travelled on business, though not a great deal. I’m from California, and I spent a lovely two weeks in Atlanta, and another lovely two weeks in Pittsburgh. Enjoyed playing tourist!
I fly for business a little less than once per year on average, and expect that to decline mildly. Say, 0.9 trips/year to 0.8 trips/year. Most cross-country communication is already by conference call/email/etc, so for most of the conferences I go to, the main point isn’t the formal sessions but the chance to meet people/chat/share experiences over beer, and Zoom isn’t going to replace that.
I don’t really travel much for work, but have plenty of coworkers who do, so I answered for them.
We travel to clients’ offices to do server installs, upgrades, and training. Clients sometimes come to us as well for trainings (particularly new clients).
And, we have a number of folks who do a lot of travel speaking at conferences and trade events.
We’re officially not doing any travel (and not having clients come to us for in-house training) at least through the end of 2020. I expect that date to extend out at least through 1st quarter next year.
While some things will ultimately require some travel (doing initial server installs for new clients), I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the final push we need to move to a totally cloud-based solution.
I voted “Don’t anticipate flying again for business meetings.”
