Virgin Galactic to start selling space flights for $450,000 per spot – IT Pro – News

Part of the business travel was also “habit”.

“Of course we will fly the managers from Amsterdam to Tokyo for the one-hour kick-off meeting. You have to be able to look each other in the eye, right?”

“Obviously we then have a team of engineers for 2 weeks during the installation on-site. They only have work on 4 of the days, because they have to wait for deliveries from other teams, but it is necessary for the cooperation.”

Since mid-2020, this self-evidentity has disappeared. The tools have gotten better and everyone can handle more of them (because they work with them on a daily basis).

Instead of flying over: the kick-off as a Teams meeting, and then a ‘space’ where the engineers and future management team can work together, while they have access to the necessary systems via a VPN.

From a business perspective it has always been better (on paper): much lower costs (travel budget alone), staff who are not on a plane for an unhealthy amount of time and who are away from home and even ‘greener’ too.

It was just unproven that it was also good enough. Since March 2020, the entire business community has simply plunged into the deep bath and it turned out that we could swim just fine. All that flying was like swimming rings, but we didn’t need them at all.

That is why business travel has so far lagged far behind eg. vacation travel recovery. And to be honest, I also think that it could take a very long time. The obvious has been broken and ‘remote first’ is a cost saving.

[Reactie gewijzigd door Keypunchie op 6 augustus 2021 15:40]

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