Face to face: sealing the deal still requires travel in a Webinar world.

• Author: Warren, Larry
• Position: Business Trends

In recession battered 2009, corporate travel dropped an average of 20 percent nationwide. The question corporate travel managers and travel agents are asking now is: How much of that business will return and how much is gone forever?

One Utah travel agent who spends a lot of time in corporate conference rooms selling travel services has noticed a change in those conference rooms. Television monitors are mounted on walls, speakers are arranged around tables and small video cameras stare out from the corners. Video conferencing is becoming mainstream, eliminating the need for yesterday's routine business trips.

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From setups as simple as Webinars on gotomeeting.com and Skype, to elaborate video productions with in-house producers and directors, digital connections are making actual human connections less frequent.

At General Electric (GE), one of the nation's largest business travel spender, travel dropped by $30 million last year according to the authoritative industry journal Business Travel News. It reports that GE is focused on eliminating internal travel by using telepresence equipment in place of visits. At Verizon, which knows a thing or two about digital communication, expanded videoconferencing is reducing corporate travel, saving both time and money, as well as reducing its carbon footprint.

Hard Impact

"The impact has been coming for 10 years at least," says Alan Hess, owner of Utah-based Hess Corporate Travel. "Video conferencing is easier now." Hess estimates his clients have cut their business travel by 30 percent since mid-2008. The question now is: How much business travel will return as companies incorporate more cost effective ways to communicate with customers and colleagues? "It makes good sense for them to examine what they're spending and ask 'can we do this with one less trip?'" Hess says.

"People are investing, evaluating and making aggressive plans for meetings," says Kathleen Roberts, development manager at Christopherson Business Travel, about client initiatives toward video conferencing. Christopherson's corporate bookings are down about 20 percent since the recession began, but Roberts says it's not possible to say how much, if any, of the decline could be attributed to video conferencing. And for some companies, travel spending has actually increased during the recession.

Out of Touch

Connecting people remotely can save money without losing interpersonal impact in some circumstances, but...