Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
I don't know what "sheltering in a pandemic" means. I thought we were all encouraged to eat out in restaurants once they reopened. Hence the government subsidy.
But, to the topic in hand, it will clearly be a long time before business travel returns to previous levels, but it's not going away completely. I've had three casual conversations just today with friends and two of them revealed that a child had just been / is on a business trip - one filming in Germany, one meeting a customer in Italy.
I don't think business travel with go away completely either but I think many companies will drastically scale it back. Just from the company I work for, we've saved into the millions of dollars just in the past 6 months from cutting our business travel. It'll be different for every industry obviously but I can't see companies going back to the previous model of doing business. And with teleconferencing capabilities being drastically expanded during COVID, it's difficult to justify paying thousands of dollars for a single trip when the goal of that trip could be accomplished in a Zoom meeting.
Now of course there are exceptions that need face-to-face interaction to be successful however those will likely face increased scrutiny.