News Forum - Talk of Test & Go cutoff date, approved travellers can’t reschedule flights

[Marc26]

23 minutes ago, King Cotton said:

Optimistic trust there, I fear, @DesperateOldHand. Now that Zoom-like virtual meetings and conferences have become the near-normal, I cannot see any future generation choosing to spend hours - days even - travelling to F2F meetings, knowing that that considerable expense may not or can not be justified. Just my view, of course.

Most of the expenses are deductible and in most cases, the business gained by in-person meetings would far outweigh any expenses left to pay by the business after the tax write off

 

 

[LoongFred]

8 hours ago, Marc26 said:

You lose so much of building personal relationships by not meeting in person and building a good working relationship 

I would call almost all of my customers my friends. That's been built up over years of meeting with them.

I've been to a lot of their houses, met their wives and kids.

Know where their kids are going to University, what sports they play

You can't develop that over Zoom

So much business is predicated on trust. 

My business is 100% trust. I can easily do bad for my clients on every transaction.

You build relationships so that those people know they can trust you to look after them and not just the bottom line 

I agree that personal relations are very important in some areas. However, business meeting can be about many things and not meeting with clients. My experience is in healthcare and most meeting had nothing to do with meeting clients on a one on one basis.  There were discussions about new technologies, future expansion,  government regulations, etc. Although very important and having the ability to interact real time  was crucial,  being in the same room face to face was not. Since our headquarters was ~100 miles away, I spent 2 + hours driving each way, for a 2-4 hour meeting, that could have been effectively done by zoom

Many business meeting are sort of perks and in fun places, but not really necessary to do the job. 

I used to participate and/or conduct inspections for certification and accrediting. Of course these required in person presences.

I think smart businesses will be reassessing the needs to travel.

[Marc26]

1 hour ago, LoongFred said:

I agree that personal relations are very important in some areas. However, business meeting can be about many things and not meeting with clients. My experience is in healthcare and most meeting had nothing to do with meeting clients on a one on one basis.  There were discussions about new technologies, future expansion,  government regulations, etc. Although very important and having the ability to interact real time  was crucial,  being in the same room face to face was not. Since our headquarters was ~100 miles away, I spent 2 + hours driving each way, for a 2-4 hour meeting, that could have been effectively done by zoom

Many business meeting are sort of perks and in fun places, but not really necessary to do the job. 

I used to participate and/or conduct inspections for certification and accrediting. Of course these required in person presences.

I think smart businesses will be reassessing the needs to travel.

Yes of course each business is different and the needs are different 

 

My business is 100% personal relationship based

Yes, we have to perform once we get the business but as I mentioned before, I could screw my client pricing wise on a lot of the transactions we do 

And there are a lot of errors in my business 

That can run in the 10's of thousands of dollars 

It's a lot easier to come to agreement on those when you developed a strong personal relationship 

 

One other thing is attracting new business 

For some businesses, attending conferences is crucial in meeting new clients 

 

You can never replace that aspect with a zoom call

 

So I think some businesses will try and cut travel expenses 

 

But for some, it's vital

 

And as I mentioned prior, so much of travel expenses is tax deductible so it really isn't  a huge expense for the company as you would think