Teleconferencing as plan A, with flying as a back-up

Business travel accounts for about $165 billion of the roughly $700 billion spent each year on domestic travel...

Business travel accounts for about $165 billion of the roughly $700 billion spent each year on domestic travel. Since overall travel began recovering in 2003, spending on business travel has been increasing.

Until now. It appears that business travel will be slowing over the next year. The main reasons corporate travel managers cite are the extensive flight delays this year and rising costs. “Some companies are putting in much tighter controls about flying,” said Susan Gurley, the executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, a trade group. “There’s an increased frugality, and I think everybody is becoming more conscientious” about weighing the benefits of a trip against the costs, she said.

The air fares themselves, in general, are not rising yet. According to the Travel Industry Association, average domestic air fares in the US actually dropped 1.3 per cent in August compared with August 2006. But other factors, especially a 6.5 per cent rise in average hotel rates, drove up overall travel costs by 2.4 per cent for the month.

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As spending is more controlled, we’ll be hearing more about alternatives to the headaches of business travel — and teleconferencing. It was about five years ago that teleconferencing was first widely presented as a way to reduce travel costs. With great audio and wraparound video screens, you really felt as if you were with the other participants, even though they might be far away.

There were problems with teleconferencing. The technology was expensive. Even if you had a system, the other person or company had to have one, too. At first, teleconferencing often merely replaced internal phone calls or e-mail messages with televised intra-office “meetings.” What once would have been accomplished quickly became an in-house television program.

Many firms are working through those problems as teleconferencing systems have become common. Beyond travel costs, the chief motivator is the cost of lost productivity when an employee is stuck for hours, or days, at an airport. Used judiciously, teleconferencing allows companies to decide what is critical to the core business and requires a trip, and what is less critical.