Technologies could hold back business travel | Hacker News Reader

Technologies could hold back business travel

wsj.com

30 pointslxm48 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> “showed commitment by showing up”

Societal Proof of Work. I don't disagree. Just interesting how much deliberate waste is demanded by society as proof of something.

Yep. Part of the reason I put it in quotes is because I felt a little gross saying it myself :)

> Societal Proof of Work

Counterfactual: I like spending time with people. If someone winds up around me, integrates into my social life, notices little things about my work habits and preferences, I will favor them. It’s not a dick waiving contest as much as a priority one.

Lots, I suspect. If you've ever worked for a large corporation, or even a SME whose growth in process has outstripped revenue and innovation growth, you've probably seen plenty of examples where the proof of work is as important - or more important - than the work itself.

I could cite a number of examples from my own career but, without naming names, one in particular stands out: a company that, at least for a time, developed an absolute obsession with Toyota-style whiteboards and A3 reports where - again, at least for a time - it became more important to deliver a good whiteboard presentation and A3 report than to deliver real value by doing the real work.

Every Wednesday there would be this monstrous and disruptive jamboree where the CEO and a dozen or two hangers-on would tour the office for half a day reviewing whiteboards for various parts of the business in rotation. It was a colossal waste of time for all involved and led to some of the least helpful and relevant examples of drive-by management I've ever seen, even years later.

Bear in mind the company was ~250 employees at the time and you'll form an idea of how wasteful this all was, especially when preparation time is taken into account. The irony of this all being based on Toyota's "lean" manufacturing processes shouldn't be lost on anyone.

This was many years ago though, and I believe they've moved past it. This story isn't particularly intended as a criticism of them either: I've certainly disappeared down my own share of pointless rabbit holes at times, hopefully learning from the experience along the way.

Finally, as a counterpoint, I wouldn't say there's nothing of value in the Toyota approach. Far from it. Nowadays - different company, obviously - I deliver a PDCA style report to the board on a weekly basis but my target is that it should take me no longer than 15 minutes to complete, and I certainly don't drag my whole team into any kind of regular dog and pony show. It is however a quick, easy way of letting people know how things are going, and ensuring that any problems (and solutions) are surfaced.

I agree; even I, a tech person who does quite a bit of (pre)sales thinks that. But it did work fine in 2020. I believe sales will go back to travelling, but many other roles that 'did not work if not in person' or 'where less inefficient remotely' seem to work fine remotely and might stay remotely (for many reasons).

That's fair, although it's also possible that the way business is done could change (in fact, I think it has already been changing for at least a few decades, thanks to videoconferencing and telecommunications).

Having sales teams available to receive inquiries and to chat, and having marketing materials (that, at least in the case of software, closely resemble documentation) accessible openly shifts more of the relationship-building responsibility (and opportunity) towards the client.

And sure, latency and interruptions can be annoying. As can noises and distractions during in-person meetings. Good humour and offering ideas and suggestions for improvements are part of relationship building. Let's hope that connectivity and reliability continues to advance at the same time as well.

Not every company adheres to the work from home order here in Belgium. Office workers are pushed to come to the office, and I see a lot of traffic on the roads, almost pre-pandemic levels. As fat as I understand, the number of decision-makers who don’t believe in remote work is quite high.

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.

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.

They are a replacement out of necessity, but a poor substitute.

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.

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.

Is it really necessary to take your potential client out for lunch for them to buy your stuff?, If no one else did it, does it really add value to your product? Would these people stop buying what you have to offer whether from you or some other provider if there were no executive lunches or business dinners?

Are executives lounging in a luxury hotel really essential to business? Or jollies for that matter.

I think that things like repairs and technical visits are still a long way from being able to be carried out remotely, but the other items seem to be things that are non-essential.

Not essential, but enjoyable for many people. And they’ll push their agenda.

But if the travel was for sales? Can't take the client out for a fancy lunch via teleconference.

Maybe it's because I work in web tech and not something more glamorous but I've never worked with anyone who actually liked being taken out for lunch by a salesperson. Everyone knows it's all fake. The client knows that they're paying because the cost of the lunch gets added to the price. The salesperson knows the lunch isn't actually going to swing a deal their way. I don't really understand why people go through with it.

If I employed someone who was willing to sign a contract because they'd had a fancy lunch I'd be skeptical that they're capable of assessing a purchase properly.

If your customers are WFH, you aren't visiting them to make a sale.

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.

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

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.

Yeah, there's an invisible perk here which is being lost.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Can you elaborate on why leisure travel is more critical?

You can replace most business travel with technology, zoom etc. You can't replace leisure in the same way

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.

Except there are still no overseas travel, and there probably wont be for years.

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.

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-tar...

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/19/france-amer...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 - 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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

Isn't frequent business travel a health risk anyway? [1]

[1] https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-health-risks-of-business-travel

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.

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

https://archive.is/DOsnz

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