Is your travel getting replaced by virtual meetings?
More out of curiosity than anything else, I’m interested to know if any of you have started holding more virtual meetings compared to your usual travel schedules?
The New York Times ran a story yesterday about how rising travel costs are forcing more businesses to adopt virtual meetings in place of good old fashioned I-flew-halfway-across-the-world meetings.
As just one example:
Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May alone, for an annual saving of millions of dollars and countless hours of wearying travel for its workers.
So virtual meetings are definitely cheaper, not to mention if you’ve got a really good setup it can make you feel like you’re in Minority Report. Do you think that virtual meetings are going to start supplanting the travel in your schedule anytime soon?
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My company definitely uses more online meetings, webinars, etc., rather than sending us all over the country. More efficient but not as fun!
@Cassandra absolutely less fun! I think that we’re looking at a larger trend, though, since it’s unlikely that transportation costs are going to be coming down soon, whereas digital technology, bandwidth, and display technology is becoming more and more affordable.
It’s already started with my company. Large meetings are now to be done via the web
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