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Virtual could overwhelm future meeting market
Based on the success of telepresence or virtual by early users, a startling study says it could replace 70 percent of internal travel and 10 percent of external travel over the next 10 to 15 years.
That could lead to an aggregate reduction of 21 percent in corporate travel spending, predicts Bernstein Research.
“Technical advances in video conferencing have moved the capability to an entirely new level over the last 18 months, so that it now has the potential to fundamentally impact business travel,” said their report.
Other findings:
—The US telepresence or virtual meeting market will be worth US$30 billion in the next decade or within 15 years and almost half of that will be spent by small companies, according to the report.
—As part of that shift, major hotel chains such as Marriott and Starwood have started offering telepresence suites in heavy business markets such as Chicago and Hong Kong, a trend that will escalate in the near future.
Telepresence is a type of teleconferencing developed by Cisco Systems that goes beyond the traditional screen-to-screen experience. By using high-definition video and audio, it creates the illusion that meeting participants are sitting in the same room, even though they may be thousands of miles away in separate “telepresence suites.”
In many suites, the video screen curves around a table, adding to the feeling that participants are physically present.
Forrester Research has found that 17 percent of US business travelers have used either videoconferencing or virtual presence in the past year to reduce their business travel, and 48 percent expect their employers will have policies in place by the end of this year over the use of videoconferencing and virtual presence to reduce demand for business travel.
The report also said that about 30 percent of the estimated 6 million to 8 million conference rooms in the US will be telepresence-enabled over the next five years.
The concept is clearly going mainstream.
One major impact of this will be on agents, who will need to find ways to stay relevant in the face of possible reduced business travel.
But they will be far from the only ones profoundly influenced by the trend, if predictions are accurate.
By David Wilkening
David
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