Sure it’s a big ask but if the planning is important and you are important to the planning and it is deemed a sufficient quality of planning can only happen in person … business travel seems far too common to be worthless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nobody said anything about work activities after 5. You can go do whatever.

But hanging out with coworkers when you’re all seeing each other for a rare or even first time seems like a pretty common whatever.