Business Travel Goes Virtual

Companies are using technology in creative ways to keep moving while everyone stays put.

BY JARED LINDZON ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANUJ SHRESTHA

Traveling for work looks very

different now.

According to the Institute of Travel Management, more than a third of corporate travel managers expect to reduce corporate travel by 50% to 70% in 2021.

“The landscape has permanently been altered,” says Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, and author of The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation.

But the needs of businesses haven’t changed: Salespeople still need to showcase products to customers, global organizations still need to facilitate face time between colleagues in different parts of the world, and professionals still need to hear from industry thought leaders.

To adapt to a world without frequent travel, international conferences and events such as the World Economic Forum and CES have moved to online formats, meetings happen over videoconferencing platforms, and businesses are tapping into new tools and technologies to stay connected. A Wall Street Journal report predicts tech alternatives adopted during the pandemic—and their associated cost savings—could end up cutting business travel by 36% over the long term.

“People have discovered [that tech is] cheaper and more convenient,” says West. “A lot of people are not going to go back to the previous way of doing things.”

Staying connected to headquarters

remotely

As the New York–based director of brand and digital marketing for Fiverr, the online freelance marketplace headquartered in Tel Aviv, Matt Clunan and his team typically traveled to Israel at least once per quarter to collaborate with their larger team. When the pandemic hit, Clunan says he initially feared his office of about 30 would feel cut off from their roughly 500 colleagues seven time zones away.

“Not seeing someone face-to-face changes how you communicate,” he says.

At first Clunan’s team resorted to video-based communication, but before long he noticed that staff members in both cities were overwhelmed by constant video meetings. An avid podcast listener, Clunan decided to try a prerecorded, audio-only format to improve internal communications.

With the help of the independent podcast publishing company Wonder Media Network, he and his team began producing internal podcasts in early April. The format offered a respite from video robots that would allow visitors to explore the physical space remotely from their laptops or PCs. Then they created a 3D rendering of the flagship CWC location in Palo Alto for customers to explore in virtual reality.

“We realized that our imagination is the limit,” says Chiachio, explaining that CWCs in VR aren’t limited to just re-creating existing spaces. “We’ve created a lot of spaces that are brand-new.”

HP has also incorporated augmented reality that lets customers place digital products in real-world environments like home offices, hospitals, and other workplace settings, and they can integrate 3D applications from customer blueprints for a true hybrid experience.

Chiachio says the shift to providing digital experiences presented unexpected benefits. For example, presentations can be translated into the audience’s native language, and they can be delivered to larger groups— not just people able to travel to a CWC.

“The reach we’re having with our events in terms of participants has increased 800%,” Chiachio says. “From every angle there’s added value.”

calls, allowed team members to consume the roughly halfhour-long updates at their own convenience, arrive at meetings already briefed, and make better use of those limited hours when staff members on both sides of the planet are available.

“It allows us to stay connected on a more personal level, and I think that’s what was missing,” says Clunan. “Whether there are travel restrictions or not, [internal podcasts] will continue to be part of our [team’s] culture.”

In-person demos from

a distance

Manhattan-based primary care provider Eden Health’s virtual care practice has exploded in popularity since the start of the pandemic, but the company still needed to find ways to show its clinics to potential landlords or employers considering building out an Eden Health clinic for employees.

The company offers its digital services in 48 states, and in-person healthcare solutions throughout the New York tristate area, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Boston. “Normally we’d invite folks out, give them a tour of the office, then sit down and talk through what it might look like in their space,” says Jonathan Stevens, head of growth for Eden Health.

But this year the company turned to a new, travel-free approach: 360-degree virtual tours.

“In some ways it’s better because we can not only show them one location, we can actually show them many of our clinics, and the different configurations, layouts, and aesthetics,” says Stevens.

Stevens adds that it’s a lot easier for his sales team to send a link via email than it is to get a prospect to schedule an in-person tour.

“The virtual tours are hosted on URLs that you can share with the prospects,” he says. “You give them the tour together and say, ‘As you’re thinking through this, you can take yourselves through the tour again.’ ”

A sales floor without

a floor

Prior to the pandemic, HP hosted guests at its Customer Welcome Centers (CWCs) all over the world to demonstrate its latest innovations for clients, media, analysts, and technology partners.

But when the CWCs were closed in February 2020 because of the pandemic, Ester Chiachio, HP’s Head of Corporate Experiences, and her team began exploring digital and virtual alternatives.

At first they used video presentation tools to host meetings online. Next, they brought in telepresence

Virtual reality: The next best thing to

being there

Helsinki-based VR and animation studio FAKE Production helps global companies, including Air France–KLM, the Boston Consulting Group, and Toyota, stay connected via secure, remote meetings in virtual environments with their flagship VR product, Glue. Available on the HP Reverb VR Headset and other VR headsets, or on PCs (with more limited functionality), Glue’s interface is designed to mimic real-world conversations, giving attendees the personal touch that comes with faceto-face interactions and which videoconferences lack.

FAKE moved from developing graphics and animations for TV shows, movies, and ads into the VR space five years ago as headsets became more widely available. Since the pandemic, the company has seen a huge spike in demand for Glue and its virtual meeting capabilities.

“The feeling of presence is one of our cornerstones,” says Matti Pouhakka, sales director for FAKE. “You have all the tools that you have in a physical meeting room: You can share your PowerPoints, share your videos on a big presentation wall. There’s even a whiteboard that you can use like a physical whiteboard.”

Glue features an avatar system that builds 3D characters who actually look like its users. It then employs artificial intelligence to give the avatars facial expressions that change based on the speaker’s volume, tone of voice, and word choices. Glue also incorporates audio feedback that mimics real-world environments, so a speaker on the other end of the virtual room sounds farther away than someone seated next to the listener.

There will always be occasions when people need to be physically together, but the huge uptick in adoption of such tools in recent months leads West of the Brookings Institution to believe there won’t be a total return to business travel as usual once the pandemic is finally over. “Now that people have been forced to deploy digital products, they know how to do it, they have the right pieces in place, their staff is trained on using these techniques— there’s really no reason to go back,” he says.