With business travelers surfing the Net from 30,000 feet and e-mailing from their hotel rooms, it is evident that technology is enhancing business travel. To what degree, however, is technology replacing business travel?
As the nation’s economy remains troubled and horror stories about airline travel accumulate, more businesses will look to alternatives to business travel, suggests Kenneth Sousa, lecturer in the computer information systems department at Bryant College.
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“With airports the way they are, airlines adding more redeyes so that business travelers can save time, burnout from traveling, not to mention the expense of it all, many companies are looking to video conferencing as an alternative” said Sousa. “Business travel takes significant time out of the day and can have a serious effect on job satisfaction.”
Barbara Goldberg, chief financial officer at East Providence telecommunications company EBS Econotel, has noticed the difference. “We have been seeing an increased interest in video conferencing,” she said.
She posits that the increase in video conferencing usage, while having much to do with the economy and the rigors of business travel, also stems from advances in technology.
“We (EBS Econotel) have been offering video conferencing for five years” she said. “There is more capability and reliability in the equipment, and the costs have come down.”
Interconnectivity also plays a role.
“When introduced, video conferencing systems were proprietary, meaning one brand’s system could only ‘talk’ to the same brand, like fax machine when they were first introduced. Now it’s open architecture, so different systems can communicate with one another,” she said.
Performance is also improved. “In the old days, there were lost calls and a bridging service (a third-party used to host the call) needed to be used” Goldberg explained. “Now a bridging service is not necessary for calls involving up to four sites.”
Kenneth Sousa points out that PC-based video conferencing has improved along with computer processor speeds and Internet connectivity. “Five years ago, it (computer video conferencing) wasn’t really possible. Just about everybody was using slow modems. Cable, DSL and T1 connections are changing the landscape, however.”
The improved technology enables companies to meet more often, and to meet almost spontaneously if they need to. “You can have a meeting within an hour’s notice,” said Sousa. “There is an initial investment in the technology, but after that the infrastructure is available whenever it is needed.”
Is video conferencing having a noticeable effect on business travel? Sousa thinks so.
“Marlborough, Massachusetts is a high-tech boom area that sees a lot of business travel. What’s happening is a reduction of hotel room sales there. Many of those companies that would be traveling there are using video conferencing instead.”
Sousa admits that video conferencing has some drawbacks. “Security is an issue” he said. “There is nothing that I know of that can keep a video conference completely safe from prying. There is also the loss of real personal interaction.”
According to Allison Marble, public relations manager at the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), this lack of personal interaction is behind a decrease in the use of video conferencing in the last year.
“In a survey of its members performed by the NTBA in April of this year, only 33 percent of respondents said they had been increasing their use of video conferencing in the face of higher travel costs” she said. “This is down from the responses to the same question posed in a June 2000 survey, in which 48 percent of respondents said they had been using video conferencing as a step to deal with higher airfares.”
But Bob Vincent, vice president of corporate communications at GTECH Corporation of West Greenwich, a NBTA member company, said GTECH has stepped up its use of video conferencing significantly. He said, “We’ve been using video conferencing for four-five years–it’s part of the routine.”
He points to the same advantages that Sousa and Goldberg suggest.
“Over the past year we have reduced travel expenses by 30 percent” he said. “We do business in 44 countries. It’s less disruptive. People have adapted to it very quickly.”
