In this Oct. 27, 2020, file photo, passengers walk through Salt Lake City International Airport, in Salt Lake City. Business travel might never look the same in the wake of the coronavirus. Consulting firm McKinsey and Co. says it took international business travel five years to recover after the 2008 recession. But this time, the ease of videoconferencing could put a permanent dent in corporate trips. A partner account executive at a U.S.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian recently suggested business travel might settle into a “new normal” that is 10% to 20% lower than it used to be. Amazon, which told it employees to stop travelling in March, says it has saved nearly $1 billion in travel expenses so far this year. The online shopping giant, with more than 1.1 million employees, is the second-largest employer in the U.S.
Peter Belobaba, who teaches airline management at MIT, said business travel is down partly because some people are afraid to fly and partly because companies fear liability if employees contract COVID-19 while travelling for work. The cutback in travel has been a boon for teleconferencing services. Zoom said it had 370,200 customer businesses with at least 10 employees at the end of July, more than triple the number it had at the end of April.Rebecca Lindland, an automotive consultant and founder of Rebecca Drives, used to travel 38 weeks each year for test drives and auto shows. This year, she didn't fly from March until September.
Clarke also expects some companies will flip their travel. Instead of letting a few executives travel a lot, he said, companies could let most employees work from home and fly them all back to their headquarters once a year.
Hopefully people will learn that most business can be accomplished by teleconferencing and that the business trips are wasteful of time and energy.
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