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Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

One thing that I think the business world has finally learned during the COVID-19 social distancing is that business travel isn't nearly so important as we had imagined. And attending conferences was always fun but it's been amazing to watch how fast conferences have switched to an on-line format (well ... the technical ones that I would attend).

So it's my opinion that the airlines, hotels, conference centers and taxi/ride-share companies are in for a rude awakening. Tourism might increase when this isolation ends, but I think there's going to continue to be a serious contraction in the market segments that support business traveling. And when you combine it with the financial damage done to businesses during the pandemic, they've got two fiscal reasons for eliminating business travel.

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At least in academia, people usually don't go to conferences to attend the talks - they are uploaded on youtube and you could watch them from home. People go because they are good networking events. That is something which you can't really do online.

Edit: of course, a minority of attendees are there to present their work, which can indeed be done online.

In my academic field (computer science), people go to conferences because you have to present in person the research that you publish there. The question of whether traveling to the conference is worthwhile at all is irrelevant. With conferences moving online, the question starts to have some importance and the answer isn't so clear.

Exactly, so many people are missing the point that so many of these events can't just be online and then you call it a day.

It's about building relationships and connections. Not just watching presentations.

I'm not disagreeing that there are networking opportunities ... I work for a university and have been going to a conference or two a year since I started here simply to meet up with people. I think we'll find a way to recoup some of that value remotely and I think that the business will accept that there is some loss in networking rather than pay for the trips.

Throughout most of the '90s and '00s, I traveled between a week and two weeks a month for work. There was a huge decline in the "luxury" of flying around the world after 9/11 that's continued to get worse and worse since. Flying anywhere these days is simply a chore.

Meeting people face to face is insanely valuable.

Here is one example from personal experience. I met someone at a conference in Silicon Valley years ago. Later on I’m doing research for a project and trying to find subject matter experts to lead the effort. In my research I find 15 people who are qualified. Two respond to my attempts to contact them. One dismissed me and the other is that person I met at that conference. He tells me that the only reason he’s talking to me still is we met at the conference.

We started working together and it’s been a fruitful endeavor.

The moment in person conferences are safe again they will explode. Everyone will want to see other people again,

I assumed it was important as a power game thing (if you care about my business so much come out here and stand in front of me). When this is all over the people who say "why do you need to fly me out there, we teleconferenced for 2 months" will get slowly written out of the e-mail chains.

I've got a friend who now works from home. Took them all of 3 days to set up. And yet they want her back in the office as soon as possible. Mind boggling to be honest. She's saving so much time and money not commuting and still does the same amount of work.

She says she doesn't like it though, the office environment is better. So there's that.

My institution has been trying to bring people back in some format since day 1.

My institution also has an administration that isn't comfortable with only measuring results over actual physical time spent in seats during a project.

I know correlation doesn't equal causation, but I'm betting there's a link in this one.

In fact, my worry is that this event will actually impede WFH. You've got a bunch of people who don't want to WFH, or who have kids at home or other handicaps; the productivity hit will be tremendous, and bosses will feel this.

Sure, we can rationally explain it away, but I doubt any of that will stick to a boss who was already on the fence or somewhat against WFH. They will just see their biases confirmed.

You probably don't get that conferences exist for personal interaction, not just to present technical information. In fact I believe that business travel is what will support the travel industry, since most people will be afraid to take their families on travel without a clear necessity.

I disagree I think people will go on a business travel binge when they're able to.

I am interested to know how you have found networking and informal discussions surrounding conference talks.

Technical conferences switch to videoconferencing software. But they got much much worse in the process.

I think people are going to find the opposite, that networking events are even more crucial to growth (evidenced by research), and the ones who didn't realize this before will now fight for the opportunities that come up in firms.

Surprised no one has said it so I will: conferences provide a business deductible way to have a nice vacation. Witness how many conferences are in Vegas/Hawaii etc.

In India you don't get input tax credit for travel/conferences afaik.

Doing it wrong. Your business buys the conference tickets, travel, and some of the lodging. You stay for an extra week. All you pay for is the hotel.

Business expenses offset revenue reducing profit and in turn taxes.

Objectively, this is true. Whether the intent is to actually have a conference or not, the real outcome is that employees are A) in a different location and B) the trip is written off as an expense.

Objectively. It is impossible to say that this is not what is happening. It's like saying "The Sun does not shine." It absolutely does shine. We don't know what the motive was for it to shine, but objectively, it is shining.

> "attending conferences was always fun"

Well it's also because there were always disadvantages we forget about: hours upon hours of travel, going on your own, sleeping in unfamiliar rooms, not to mention the cost of it all. Going to a remote place for a few days isn't so fun when you remember all the hours spent in an airplane seat to get there and back.

> hours upon hours of travel, going on your own, sleeping in unfamiliar rooms

How negative those 'negatives' are depends a lot on the individual. Some people prefer routine and freak out when they stray from the routine. But other people find it exciting to stray from routine.

TBH i expected this to happen some time. I wonder how much funding agencies like NIH , ERC etc spent on travel grants per year. From my experience it s a lot

There's still a huge difference between meeting people in the halls at conferences or working with them during a seminar-visit and looking at video-conference screens.

This. I think if anything, there will be a minor bump over the next year or so, but it won't be long until people find out that really connecting still requires meeting in person. We are social creatures after all.

Not sure if huge. i ve enjoyed lectures more, and there is a lot of interaction in breakout chat rooms , probably more that RL conferences

Also, conferences easily scale to thousands now

This might be true but also sounds like it's spoken from a very privileged position.

There's probably (tens of?) millions of workers around the world separated from their families. It's not only about tourism and business travel.

> This might be true but also sounds like it's spoken from a very privileged position.

What does "privilege" have to do with this conversation? The GP's comment is a prediction about business travel. He made no such prediction about personal travel.

> It's not only about tourism and business travel.

It is for the hotels and airlines. They make most of their profits on business customers who don't have time to count pennies because they have work to do. When I visit family on the other side of the planet the total cost is often times less than the cost of a week long business trip to New York.

Heck, we've been hosting online improv shows. It's not the real thing but it's fun. Honestly surprised by how quickly we've adopted to the constraints.

Not going to happen. You can't do too many deals of any kind just over video chat. You will just loose out to ppl who make the trip to sit hit and hand hold customers/partners/employees/bankers etc.

China and South Korea have already started issuing spl permits for biz travellers. Some kind of new system being cooked up there that will probably be replicated all over.

Airlines/Tourism/Hotels etc are def going to take a big hit. Many will fold but they will be back in a year or two or however long it takes the vaccines to show up.

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