A recent report by Haddock Research shows that a third of all business flights in the USA are vulnerable to telepresence substitution.
The study was conducted in September and October 2008 among nationally representative samples of over 1,000 people per country in Canada, England and the USA, showed business travellers are interested in telepresence – defined as video-phone or video-conferencing – as an alternative to short- and long-business flying trips, with American business travellers the most interested in replacing trips with this technology. On average, 35-40 percent of airline seats taken for business by Americans, might be substituted by telepresence if it became widely available. In comparison, around 25 and 20 percent of such airline seats taken by English and Canadian business travellers, respectively, might be replaced in this way.
There also appears to be a degree of ‘low-carbon’ appeal for telepresence as an alternative to business flying, but it is not a particularly strong influence. This is based on an analysis of the ‘interest in telepresence’ according to the respondents’ personal concern about climate change.
Download the PDF press release with details on how to purchase the report and other key findings.
This result puts a statistically relevant scale to the impact of Brockmann & Company research on the substitutional effects of video communications over various classes of business travel as presented in the Value of Video Communications and the Value of Executive Video Communications reports.
