Will virtual meetings overtake the need for traditional business travel?
Posted on 27. Jun, 2010 by Kat Schneider Fotheringham in Blog, Business Travel, Uncategorized, corporate housing, executive accommodations, international business travel
Whether you own or operate a small or large business, new ways to meet and get to know your partners around the globe are cropping up all the time. One very intriguing solution is now being offered by two of the top business travel and technology providers on the globe–American Express Business Travel and Cisco–make available public Cisco TelePresence Suites through American Express Business Travel’s virtual meetings eXpert (vmX) solution. The agreement, announced last week, provides corporate clients with virtual meeting consulting services that will enable clients to make better decisions about how best to create face-to-face collaboration by leveraging the publicly-available Cisco TelePresence rooms and increase the use of private, corporate-owned systems around the world.
How will they do it? Cisco TelePresence will employ high-definition video and audio to create the experience of face-to-face meetings. People–your colleagues and peers–will appear life-sized, seated around a virtual conference table, creating an environment where meeting participants feel as though they’re sitting in the same room. Public Cisco TelePresence Suites offer handy access to organizations, travelers, remote workers and colleagues to communicate and collaborate with customers and partners.
Public Cisco TelePresence Suites are currently available through a growing ecosystem of partners supported by Cisco in major business centers around the world. Some of these locations Marriott International, the Tata Communications operated rooms at the Starwood and Taj Hotels, and the Singapore public room at the Rendezvous Hotel. Will these innovations truly replace the need for face-to-face business meetings? No, say 76% of executive polled earlier this year. But at the very minimum, they pose a strong alternative to extensive business travel, and are an equally strong example of what types of technology offerings we as corporate housing providers may want to include in our menu of services and extras.
So what do you think? Tell us how you think you’ll be using technology to improve your level of customer service and expand your clients’ ability to do business on the road and in your corporate housing suite.
