Business Travellers Planning To Cut Future Flights, Poll Finds (theguardian.com) 32
Most business travellers in the UK will take fewer flights than they used to, according to a poll, thanks to increased use of video conferencing. Only a third expected to return to the same level of flying as before the coronavirus pandemic, once travel restrictions are lifted. From a report: The huge reduction in air travel caused by Covid-19 had no impact on the work life or productivity of the majority of the business flyers, the poll found, with one in five saying the shutdown had had a positive impact. Carbon emissions from aviation were growing at 5.7% a year before the pandemic, despite many countries committing to cut all emissions to net zero by 2050 to tackle the climate crisis. Green campaigners argue that the aviation shutdown provides an opportunity to put the sector on a sustainable trajectory. Business-class seats provide most of airlines' revenues but result in more emissions than those in the economy cabin because of the greater space occupied by each passenger. Business fliers also fly far more frequently than most holidaygoers, with 10% of those in the poll taking more than 10 flights in the year up to the first lockdown in March 2020. Bill Gates recently estimated that more than 50% of business travel would end as companies adopted online meetings and cut costs.
"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:2)
I'm skeptical what people say today and what people actually do in 5 years are going to be the same thing. The main driver's of business meetings are things that a human touch is invaluable. Zoom conferences are a joke. Nobody wants to be sold something over video conference. It's way too difficult to build rapport without being able to meet face to face.
People will wax poetic about fighting climate change, but at the end of the day, business travel is only going to change if the fundamental cost structure
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:5, Insightful)
The main driver of business meetings is most of the mouth breathers didnt think of just using video conferencing.
and now that they were forced to try it they see how much easier it is than pissing away 2 days with flights and air ports then spending $ on hotels and eating out.
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:5, Insightful)
Except when the employees being entertained on the company's dime are policy makers.
Businesses don't do what is absolutely the most optimal - they do what is preferable by senior management within the limits of the business.
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Sales is very hard to do effectively without some level of “touch.” In two years it might be a 10-15% drop from 2019, but that is about it. Follow up calls like after-sales stuff might drop 50%, but that is a stretch. Project meetings will drop off for us by about 75% for us— weekly in-person meetings will go from weekly to monthly, and bi-weekly will largely go once per month with rotating staff.
What is really to be seen is the functional selling roles and how they adapt— doer/selle
Pre-pandemic != Pandemic != Post-pandemic (Score:5, Interesting)
The main driver of business meetings is most of the mouth breathers didnt think of just using video conferencing.
That's not really true. I've spent years working in large, international science collaborations and before the pandemic video conferencing was painful because there were a mix of in-person and remote people in meetings. Those who can be there in person find it much, much easier to comment, ask questions etc., capturing decent audio and video from a large lecture theatre seems to be exceptionally hard and the format of the in-person part makes it hard to take effective questions and comments from online people.
During the pandemic, this has not been an issue because nobody is in person. There is no need to capture audio and video from a large lecture room and everyone is in the same position so nobody has a huge communication advantage. Once the pandemic is over I see nothing to suggest that the huge difference between in-person and remote will not drive a lot of people to shift back to in-person. We may not return all the way back to where we were before but I doubt we will stay anything like as online as we are now.
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"there were a mix of in-person and remote people in meetings."
I have a specific regular meeting that pre-pandemic was 100% call-in for this very reason. However, due to a merger and an office move everyone that attends that meeting will be in the same building post-pandemic, so it will be converting to in-person.
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Those who can be there in person find it much, much easier to comment, ask questions etc.
This. Those people who believe that all meetings can be effectively virtualised have never been part of a complex or effective meeting.
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They certainly "thought" of it. If anything, the pandemic reminded me of how much I hate having to use videoconferencing. It's fine for a quick meeting, but an extended day of negotiations over videoconference is awful and much less productive.
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:4, Interesting)
Found the boomer! Seriously, though, only the older generations think this way and they're slowly but surely leaving the work force.
Business travel is going to stay at reduced levels for two reasons.
1) The vast majority if it is a waste of time and money and companies are recognizing that. I work for a large company (>200k employees) and they've changed their policies after determining that about 50% of the pre-pandemic business travel was unnecessary. It's expected to save over a million dollars per year going forward, so it's very doubtful that they're going to revert those policies and allow more travel.
2) There's a reason email and texts have supplanted voice calls. The current generation grew with them so feel natural. The next generation is growing up with Facetime and Zoom and will be just as comfortable with video conferences as the current generation is with email.
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:4, Insightful)
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The story at my employer is that sales showed the *most* productivity increase due to zero travel, since when they are on a plane they are out of contact and their entire job involves being in contact..
Re:"Say" and "Do" are Two Different Things (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, there are only about 30 companies in the US with over 200,000 employees worldwide. The lowest revenue figures I could find in this group was McDonalds with "only" $21 billion. Depending on the industry, these companies would be spending potentially hundreds of millions each year on travel expenses.
It almost certainly won't be hard for a sales manager to claim he can increase sales by at least 0.005% if he can go back to pre-pandemic business travel levels. So if they are only saving a million, it won'
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Well, I think most businesses will rethink their travel policies.
Salespeople? Yes, they will resume flying ASAP. Again, face time with customers is huge. So they're going to be the first flying around to meet customers.
The rest of them? It's really going to depend. Junkets to conferences will probably be cut back - it's still a good networking event, but they are likely to be scaled back. Conferences that are purely junkets and have low networking value, like E3 and CES will probably see HUGE cutbacks. Beca
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So sales may have some in person facet, but generally speaking businesses have traditionally endeavored to have sales people living within a reasonable car drive of their target customers (at least the ones they'd bother with any personalized individual attention. If the sales persons coverage involves flights, then they are going to take a while to respond to customers and that's not as nice seeming as 'hey, this guy lives within 50 miles of us, he's *local*.
There are however a lot of times when more rare
Good for the planet (Score:2)
and everyone has learned over the last year that for many things a physical meeting is not needed. Virtual meetings are much cheaper once you have all of the kit & networking in place - which we now have. I did not say no meetings, just less of them.
If you work in the airline industry, sorry: less need for your services, but this has happened many times before to other industries.
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It all depends on what you're doing. For those of us who are Field Engineers, it's all the same. hell, I've had to travel twice during the pandemic, so have spent 2 months in paid quarantine over the past year because of it.
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Consultant Travel (Score:2)
Why ride in a smelly plane to a grungy hotel... (Score:3)
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I didn't know you Walmart greeters went on business trips ...
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This guy never has been to a business trip, or he's employed by a shitty company.
I'm a dev. I was sent to Colombia for 3 days. 5 star hotel, and since I was alone, a company director who was also on the trip had me go with his group for those 3 days and we ate at fancy restaurants every single time. I had a daily limit, he had a bottomless company card.
It was an one time deal, but it made me realize how much of a code monkey I am. It was basically a 1-week vacation since I didn't do any actual work, just a
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Sounds like a good deal for you. Back in the day when I was traveling a lot (circa 2010 or so) that was the case for me too. We always stayed at JW Marriotts and had generous per diems and we all had our own rental cars. Getting top tier status on the airlines meant that I frequently got upgrade to 1st class. Then slowly it started to change. Cheaper hotels, lower per diems, sharing cars. Then the TSA came to be and travel really started to suck for me and I decided to get off the road.
These days I might tr
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Holy crap you must have been part of some shitty business meetings.
For me it's ride a smelly plane to a lovely hotel to sleep on a perfectly comfortable bed, eating great food at other's expenses, drink just as much as I want to because I have less stress away from work than at work, and the people I meet with don't generally fart in my direction. Even though the last business meeting was in France. No farts. Mind you they didn't tell me my mother was a hamster and my father smelt of elderberries either.
CO2 rise and the pandemic (Score:2)
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/covid-lockdown-causes-record-drop-carbon-emissions-2020#gs.ysrgrc
"A drop of almost two and a half billion tons of CO2 this year is like taking 500 million cars off the world’s roads for the year. Good things are happening as more states and countries make ambitious climate commitments and real progress." said Jackson, a professor of Earth system science in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences*
7% Lower than in 2019. China has been l
long journey (Score:1)