"Within five years, technology will obliterate the need for business travel." - Inspired by new videoconferencing technologies and rising fuel costs

I completely agree. Remember that one of the big benefits touted by the media, business professionals and etc. of the Internet at the beginning of the information age was that it broke down boundaries, especially boundaries of distance. The natural evolution of this benefit will be the decreasing need for business-related travel.

Of course the big "but" in this is how accessible will this technology be for small and smaller businesses. Right now companies like WebEx make it real easy but I still think we have a ways to go.

I don't think it will be obliterated. But I can see it lessened dramatically. It will be for only the most important of meetings or conferences.

I don't think so. There is no substitute for meeting someone in person and shaking their hand. I feel you can not get a sense of someone until you meet them in person.

Obliterate? Maybe a bit strong. Will you begin doing all your dating over the internet when video conferencing makes that possible? No, so its the same for interviews, conferences, and meetings. Nothing beats the real thing. It also seems to me that it would be a lot easier to fire someone who is on a video conference, rather than having to do it in person, when they're right in front of you. Something to think about. Think about the cutbacks in elimination of bad breath, clammy handshakes, and awkward physical embraces. Video conferencing will cure all that.

Typical of this site, too much of a focus on technology and not enough on people. Human relationships are at the core of life. Fewer geeks, more authentic people. That's the future.

Business travel continues

I agree with Rip, particularly on the point of handshakes and hugs, and think that "obliterate" is too strong a word. I'm sure that some aspects of emerging technology, coupled will high fuel prices, will create less of a need for business travel. But there's still no replacement for an in-person experience, especially if you're handling serious business like closing a deal.

Hasn't it already?!
Dina Boettcher
Boettcher Communications, LLC

Through technology we continue to move in this direction, but as expressed by others I agree 'obliterate' is to strong a position. I work with far too many virtual teams who are missing the necessary relational connections of spending shared time working/socializing face to face.

So while they don't necessarily need to do that every day, day in and out - the absence of it creates a void that cannot be replicated virtually.

Technology can only support the in-person experience -- a technology-only relationship is incomplete, so there will be a lack of trust. But if you start with in-person meetings, the technology is exponentially more effective and efficient.

Whist I believe technology will drastically remove the need for a lot of business travel, I still feel there will be a need for some travel, e.g. initial contacts, sales meetings, etc

The technology still has a lot of wok to do to catch-up with the richness of interaction that is created by meeting someone in person.

Also business culture has to also assimilate these changes ad ways of doing business. So like all possible solutions, it is as much about the People, Process, and Technology dynamics and their interactions that will achieve these type of changes!

Obliterate is too strong a concept. Drastically diminish, perhaps.. I certainly hope so. We've jumped through hoops for years to avoid travelling in my company.. Phones, emails, and faxes work just fine for most of what we do; and I believe this is true for most businesses. Beam me up, Scotty....

There is no substitute for direct eye contact and a handshake. Certainly technology has already reduced the need and will continue that trend. My disagreement is with the word, "obliterate." Anyone installing new equipment will have to travel. Anyone putting together a deal of significant proportions will want to meet their prospective partner face-to-face. Minor stuff can be done online, but most dealmaking and troubleshooting will still require talented and resourceful people on location.

Rising fuel prices should be considered short term and shouldn't be a driving your budget decisions and overall business plans. Conversely, does this mean when fuel prices are low we should be traveling more? We have to think about long term goals and solutions that are going to enhance the way we do business. My guess is that it's going to be a balance of traveling and video conferencing. Referring to "obliterate business travel" seems to be a knee jerk reaction of what's happening right now because of fuel prices. I would feel uncomfortable telling a client or business partner I can’t see him/her this month, but maybe next month when the price of an oil barrel is expected to crop .40 cents.

The 'Obliteration' of business travel within (x) years was predicted last year. And the year before. And the year before. And the year before......

From the inception of the telephone, business travel has evolved. With the onset of each technological innovation, business travel has dropped a bit, and the nature of the need for business travel has changed.

Business Travel will be 'obliterated' only when human interaction becomes irrelevant. We should hope that never happens. In between now and then, technology will nip away at the edges, taking away the least useful and the most unpleasant.

We should not expect it to go away any time soon, but to continue to change. It would be interesting to hear the hotel industry's take on the future of business travel. I'll bet it would not be as dire as the telecommunication industry's view.

To a very large extent - compared to business 50 years ago - technology HAS eliminated much business travel. Seen Mad Men? We do so much more today with expedited shipping, email, the enhanced mobile platform, and tons of bandwidth.

However meeting face-to-face... to negotiate, close a deal, interview a key hire, or deliver bad news, etc. ... will never go away.

My C21st business model relies on this partially true. For global networked businesses it will surely be true. Those who do travel the globe will be experts who have to go to fix something not just for face-to-face contacts/meetings. C21st business models are less about relationships and more about connectivity so the need for face-to-face contacts will lessen and lessen very quickly. Videoconferencing is not and never will replace global travel. However, it will quickly become an active part of regional and local networked business models. It is at the local/regional levels that I expect to see increasing not decreasing business travel - travel will increase for those in sales, HR, and marketing. C21st business models at local/regional levels are going to succeed or fail on the basis of the 'consumer experience' delivered and so I expect to see a whole range of new jobs evolve to cover this critical aspect of supplier-to-consumer interactions. Local business will remain relatively people-intensive and so there will be an increased need for HR professionals to travel.

C21st business is going to change in some remarkable ways and the most remarkable thing we are about to see is that the 'new talent' in a business is not the staff but the consumers. Globally, these C21st consumers need connectivity to business networks (machine-to-machine) in large part (eg Google) not relationships with people in company. Locally, consumers need a great 'experience' when purchasing your company's product or service. Much of this local/regional business will be done with 'self-service' business models that have superb feedback loops and follow-up regimes to attend to the needs of grumpy consumers. A great deal of this new local/regional business will be done with 'lavish people pampering' services and so recruiting and retaining excellent staff will remain important. In these C21st local/regional businesses models it is the 'sense of community' that wins consumers today and next week. To support all types of new local/regional business models there will be a pressing need for more not less travel - travel will be all about fixing the 'experience' consumers have when they purchase from you....

I agree that technology will change the way business is done, but there will always be the need for face- to- face meetings, and thus, always the need for business travel. Yes, videoconferencing is efficient and less expensive, but the human need- the the need for a handshake, to look your customer/ vendor in the eye, will always be primary. Now commuting- that's a totally different animal.

This is not anything new. Collaboration360(C360) Consultants saw this event coming many years ago. This consulting and training company developed a strategic collaborative process that enables virtual project teams to collaborate anywhere regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.
For more information on this process. Check out this link.
http://collaboration360.blogspot.com/2008/03/collaborate-without-borders...

Sidebar: During their development, C360 discovered that a team can have the latest technology and the latest training. The challenge is do they trust each other? Technology is never the solution. But a strategic collaborative process guiding the virtual team is the tangible solution.

Even though I agreed with this one, I think obliterate is a far too strong expression. If You want to make successful business You will always need the direct contact. But there are a lot of meetings which can be held online.

Five Years is a pessimistic duration for the business travel to obliterate. The matter of fact is that even today it is non relevant in majority of cases. Corporate executives spend millions of dollars frivolously in traveling. The approach towards business travel for purpose and for in person ‘personal touch’ needs to change. Business need to embrace technology quickly and work towards formatting the traditional pattern of meeting and conferences. All this is sure increase the productivity, bring down the stress levels and cut costs for the company.

LOL. Place this quote up there with "I see no reason anyone would want a personal computer" and "Everything that will be invented has been invented". Technology can't erase the need for touch.

Interesting question. Should our "globalized" world renounce its most valuable kind of communication, the meeting of people face-to-face? Although my team and I developed a new online meeting methodology, my answer is "no". For me it's much more a question of how to consciously create sustainable bridges between offline and online modes and a question of how to enable complementary processes for learning, finding solutions and initiating change in society, economy, politics, education and research, as well across distances. Instead of focusing "only" on IT, e.g. our do-it-yourself online meeting methodology puts "people and passion" squarely into the center and enables a new dimension of "holistic and sustainable return on investment". I would say, it makes more sense to start a new age of "conscious as well as".

Business is about relationships. There is nothing that substitutes to being in person with someone, pressing the flesh, and doing business over a meal. Nothing.

*************
http://meadonmanhattan.wordpress.com/

As a frequent flyer I personally will miss business travel.

Will video technolgy replace vacation travel?

I keep hearing that video-conferencing will replace travel; my guess is that it will augment the collaboration and communication process that face2face does so well. In 1999 I tried out a HDTV quality v-c set-up in Cambridge (England) and found it an incredible piece of technology but still not good enough to support true team working. When we get Azimov's system (described in 'The Naked Sun')we might find a dramatic drop in travel.. until then we will need to 'do' travel to rejuvenate relationship decay that sets in with teams dispersed in time and space.

Technology will decrease the need for business travel. However, that decrease will make remaining business trips much more important. In a global economy, there simply is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. Factors such as cross-cultural communication differences and varying rates of technology adoption ensure that technology simply won't be able to "obliterate" business travel. In cultures across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Persian Gulf, for example, the value of relationships that can only be developed from face-to-face meetings will ALWAYS outway the cost of the travel to get there.

Just like in 2003

Oblierated. No. Maybe reduced in USA and UK due to rising fuel costs and cuts in capacity but for countries such as UAE, India and China you will not get past the cultural expectation that meetings are held in person especially in the beginning of a business relationship. Business people from these countries like to be friends first and then business follows on from there.

I disagree. The real question is--will technology such as video-conferencing "supplement" and "augment" business travel? Most certainly. But a teleconference will not replace and cannot duplicate the engagement, personal connection, and social enhancement of "being in the room." There are far too many distractions possible in a teleconference--that take away from the focus on the communication, understanding, and collaboration that a face-to-face meeting provides.

I certainly disagree. Business travel will most definitely change, and technology will be the agent of change, making meetings more efficient and reducing the need for travel.

There are, however, times when human interaction is required. Meeting face to face, interacting on a truly personal level, reading a room, conversations in the hall, the lounge, the elevator... these are all parts of how relationships are created and business gets done. They are not essential in every instance, but neither are the obsolete.

Technology cannot (yet?) replace the chemistry of in-person human-to-human interaction. For many things, technology facilitates virtual meetings, but for sales, relationship building, and other "personal-intensive" interactions, a personal visit will continue to be the way to go. If anything, the increase use of technology will reduce the "need" for travel therefore increasing the "value" of in-person meetings. Your personal visits will be a big indicator of how "important" you are valuing a new relationship or business deal.

Soon, even attending weddings and funerals will be a "holographic experience", with hologram projectors being able to project images of people wanting to attend, but can't. So they'll put up a section for the "hologram attendees", and people will video conference their image in, and the event will also be "hologrammed out" so the attendees can also enjoy the 3d experience of being "there" without the hassle.

You heard it here first.

Stephen Douglas
Successclick.com

Obliterate is a bit strong. The key is to "push" the interaction technologies (video, audio, desktop collaboration) to the users. We have to make it very simple to "click and meet" -and to avoid having to schedule an event (room, equipment, logistics) to collaborate.

I ran a desktop video conferencing project in 1992-3 that was going to "eliminate travel."
It did a lot of things to help relationships that were already created, but it never did that. And, the quality at the time was better than the iChat/Skype quality of today due to the use of professional TV grade cameras.
It may help for in-firm communication, but the firm to firm connections are still somewhat vendor-specific (your cisco may not talk to your at&t without tech guru intervention, etc).
One behavior we noticed - people would put paper over their camera lenses when the system wasn't on, so no one could 'see' what they were up to. People still aren't comfortable being on camera. This is something that has to be taught and socialized.

The best thing that would happen is about "being environmentally friendly"... Yes, global warming is now a global concern too!

~J~

When the PC entered the office world lots of people thought the end of paper is near! The contrary is the case.
With the increasing globalisation, emerging economies, more wealth for more people, business travel will definitely increase! You do not want to make business with people you have never met before or in places you did not even know they existed.

er what is the fun in not traveling for business?

telecommuting etc has been touted for 10 or 20 years now. It is not going to happen. Webex...? Just wishful thinking. Let's face it, during web or teleconferences, chances are some of the people are doing emails or making jokes about the meeting via IM...