Unless you’ve been hibernating or living in a cave for the last year or so, you know that skyrocketing gas prices and tough economic conditions have been forcing companies to really slash their travel budgets. With these reduced budgets came a need to find other ways to communicate and collaborate with clients, employees and prospects. Web and video conferencing has allowed people to have interactive meetings and training sessions without boarding a plane.
Of course, the rise of web conferencing doesn’t mean that business travel will be eliminated entirely, though. People will continue to travel to large conferences and networking events. However, having seen how convenient, efficient, and cost-effective meeting online is, it is clear that companies will continue to think of travel as an occasional business strategy but make web-based interaction their primary mode of communication. The gains in productivity and cost savings are just too great!
A recent article from CNN announced that most domestic airlines either already offer onboard WiFi or plan to in the coming months. This means that web conferencing will end up meeting yet another need of the average business traveler: the need to make the most of flying time. Imagine being able to have project status meetings or even hold sales demos while you are getting to your destination!
The downside: you might be expected to produce a report instead of sleeping during a long flight. The upside: you can “accidentally” exit a boring session and blame it on turbulence!
Posted under Industry Buzz, Web Conferencing
This post was written by Christine Olivas on May 14, 2009
