Zoom Fatigue Finally Revives Travel for In-Person Company Meetings

25.08.2023 - 14:27 / skift.com / Matthew Parsons / Africa

When a company as large as Shopify, circa 10,000 employees, declares it is banning meetings that involve more than two people, change is afoot.

The remote work-friendly firm, which builds software to help companies sell products online, wants to save the sanity of its staff who are being burdened by an overload of virtual meetings. This operational shift, which will affect only recurring meetings, will eliminate 10,000 company events, equivalent to 76,500 hours of meetings, according to Fortune magazine.

Experts now predict a resurgence in business travel following widespread video conferencing and online meeting fatigue, as organizations settle into better hybrid-work practices.

“We are seeing a significant increase in internal in-person meetings from our enterprise Fortune 1,000 clients,” said Ciaran Delaney, CEO and founder of booking platform Hubli. “These meetings have an average of 32 attendees and grew by 515 percent in 2022 versus the previous year.”

He added most were now reducing their office footprint and hiring more remote-first employees, and anticipates the blend between in-person and virtual to continue to evolve and refine. “Clearly both are required, and both address different needs,” he said. “In-person is critical for collaboration, innovation and relationship building while virtual brings added convenience and is ideal for more functional project driven tasks.”

According to a recent survey of UK and U.S. event planners by etc venues, more than half (53.5 percent) have seen a noticeable improvement in business performance within their organization since returning to face-to-face meetings. And 99 per cent valued them more than or the same as before the pandemic, up from 82 per cent a year ago.

As the shift to remote work continues, amid waning interest in virtual meeting platforms (based on Google searches) and after the bubble bursting in the middle of last year, there’ll be renewed interest in virtual office platforms.

These are designed to replicate that “persistent” presence online, and if working properly can lead to frictionless, impromptu remote collaboration, rather than scheduled Zooms.

“There isn’t a boardroom in the country that’s not asking the question: what do we need to do to right-size our real estate commitments,” said Adam Riggs, CEO of U.S.-based virtual office and event platform Frameable. “The following question is, what types of technology are going to support that?”

Frameable has designed online work and social spaces for companies such as Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber, and began including office environments a year ago.

“It’s not like a new category of travel, but there’s a new level of demand for internal team travel,” he added. “Instead of doing it once a year