Cigarette companies spent a lot of money on advertising [in Europe]. When cigarette ads were banned, they continued to sell cigarettes, but saved on the marketing budget. Still, it would not have been wise not to advertise beforehand: The level playing field is all that matters. For some reasons, e-cigarettes are allowed to advertise, and the shift to these products is substantial.

So for sales/consulting, it might be fine not to travel to your customer when nobody can. Afterwards, you might want to reevaluate.

(And I am speaking as an ex-consultant that hated corporate travel).

This is only true in an environment where nobody from any company travels.

However in a world where one company travels for conferences, lunches, in-person events, then that company will clearly have an advantage over the company that did none of those things.

True, but visits to far away intra-company campuses I suspect to be highly curtailed across the board when remote communications has been shown to work well.

They work when everybody is on the same page. Once things return to normal, it causes a prisoners dilemma. If a company is too cheap to send somebody to speak to you face to face, what else are they going to cheap out on?

I've been working through VC across the atlantic during the pandemic. It's been horrible. There have been multiple projects that took months - and I know, from past experience, that if I could hop over the atlantic for a week they'd be solved in that timeframe.

Why? Because of face-to-face experience and trust building and the ability to sit beside one another and grab someone quickly. It's 100% worth the ridiculously high costs of air travel and expenses.

Seconded. I did consulting for monitoring systems, and doing remote stuff (via email or weird late night calls) was just less effective and shitty.

We got on a plane to Spain, brought some Spanish speaking folks, and crushed the issue in 3 days. Left us with 3 days to chill, and our Spanish counterparts were keen to show us around Madrid; several were locals and actually took us to see their old neighborhoods and families.

Point is, fixed the issue quick AND had added benefits of travel. As an accountant I'd not be keen on it, but as someone who has to live and work, these things are the spice of life.

Do you do much work in this space internationally, for Spanish speaking countries? I'm in something related, and bilingual. I'm also interested in post-covid work travel.

> Lie #1: Remote work, cannot work.

I can see tech bros claiming, noshing on company catered meals, sweating in office gyms and finishing off with a massage is how world is made better place.

> It will be interesting to see how the corporate travel whores, spin this post-COVID in order to keep their Triple Diamond Medallion Platinum status.

Beautiful sentiment. I think there is "military-industrial-complex" like thing between corporate travel, hotels and airlines. So there will be enough "requirements" from clients to have face-to-face meetings, dinners and sports events to attend to. Besides off-sites and retreats are required for executives to keep the morale high of employees who do not get to travel.

Collocated teams and physical meetings work far better than trying to do 100% remote.

Some of #2 holds for academia as well

'Travel whores', lol

You are conflating problems. Digital companies gained a lot of revenue when brick and mortar stores were closed, isnt that kinda obvious?

Your "lies" are missing the "outside of a pandemic" qualifier.

What are your reasons for assuming business travel is a necessity outside a pandemic?

Why do you think remote work is only feasible during a pandemic?

> Why do you think remote work is only feasible during a pandemic?

Remote work was feasible in part during a pandemic because it had to be. When everyone is 100% remote, things aren’t bad. If companies don’t do anything to preserve that culture from during pandemic times, when folks start returning to the office again, remote work will very likely go back to sucking. Being remote you’ll very likely be the odd person out on meetings desperately trying to hear what was said and/or struggle to get a word in with everyone else jammed in a conference room.

A number of teams in my group have long had a rule that if anyone on a call is remote, everyone needs to do the call from their own computer.

I agree that the odd person out being remote is often a problem but distributed teams generally can adopt effective practices. If your company doesn't? Well, there are other companies that are going to be more effective.