Professor James Faulconbridge will use data from a recent (Pre-COVID) project to question what we mean/understand by business travel. He will outline how business travel as a practice is multiple things, and hence we are likely to have multiple futures. James will consider how future trends are likely to result from a mix of individual decisions (where there is discretion), organisational approaches to work, and the impacts of the great COVID experiment.
Dr Susanne Becken will discuss findings from a recent published paper about how COVID-19 forced us (that is everyone who works in professional jobs that rely on meetings to advance projects and initiatives) to learn new practices about how to conduct ‘successful’ meetings in an online environment. She will consider how this shift in practice and norms is potentially irreversible, although the future is likely to see a hybrid approach to face-to-face and virtual exchange, depending on the issue and meeting purpose.