The impact of videoconferencing on business travel: an historical point of view
Or how Bell Telephone lost half a billion with Picturephone in the 60s and why we are still not thrilled about videoconferencing
Food for thought
Do you recognize this device? It had the potential to be revolutionary, almost becoming the internet. Instead, it cost Bell Telephone half a billion.
The Picturephone
In 1970, AT&T launched a new product: the Picturephone. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company described it as ‘the first dialable visual telephone system with an acceptable picture that has been brought within the range of economic feasibility’. It turns out that the interest in videotelephony is almost as old as the telephone itself. Successful experiments were conducted as early as 1927.
In other words, on paper it sounded amazingly revolutionary.
In reality it was a commercial disaster.
There were several reasons; the first of them (and despite whatever AT&Ts said about ‘economic feasibility’) was its high price : around $1000 a month in today’s dollars . I don’t know about you, but I can’ think about a technology I would pay for 1K today. And if you were about to utter the word “iPhone”, remember it was a monthly fee.
In an attempt to save the product, Bell tried to try to spark interest by installing “PictureBooths” in several big cities (New York, Chicago, Washington DC). An interesting example of experiential marketing that nevertheless failed (again) because of its cost: using it cost a modest 150$ (today’s dollars) a minute.
A Picturephone is demonstrated at the AT&T Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in the Queens borough of New York (Mashable.com)
But the real reason may have lied not in the technology or the cost, but in human behavior. To put it briefly, people didn’t want to be seen. Being ‘on camera’ was uncomfortable to most of them; a feeling exacerbated by the fact that the “picture” part of the Picturephone was by default always on.
The interesting thing is that some people actually used it…mainly to display documents and graphics. In other words, screen-sharing with the technology available in the 70s.
Besides how many things Bell Telephone almost got right, it’s also interesting to see the predicted impact on other industries…and compare it to reality. In 1969, an executive of Bell Lab predicted ‘that before the turn of the century Picturephone will similarly displace today’s means of communication, and in addition will make many of today’s trips unnecessary’ (Noll, A. M.,1992)
“Business travel has an air of exclusivity and glamour, but the reality is often very different”
That also means the negative aspects of the whole thing are obviated. The study mentions three types: physiological, psychological and social; although frequent business travelers probably don’t need an academic to tell them that sometimes, business travel (as well as any type of travel) just sucks. The stress of unfamiliar environments and trip planning, early mornings (gotta love that 6AM flight, huh?) and late evening, jet lag, less time for exercise, healthy eating, not to forget the airport itself are only part of the list
But if you extend that transatlantic business trip to stay 4 or 5 days more instead of taking another plane (and going again through everything that entails a trip) your circadian rhythm is suddenly a little less of a spinning top. And you will go back to work refreshed instead of feeling exhausted. Not to mention that many of the top destinations for business travel also offer rich cultural experiences. So why spend 24 hours on a round trip to an interesting destination and never get to see anything outside of the meeting room?
So maybe it’s not surprising that increasing employee retention is cited as yet another pro of encouraging bleisure inside your company. That means, of course, that to take advantage of it your company has to allow you to extend your business stays in that way; something that is not yet widely extended.
If we take into account the environmental side of it, it makes even more sense. According to the New York times, “if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create”. It’s not yet clear if Generation-Y is traveling more than their parents, but a study found high levels of concern over the social and environmental impacts of travel among millennials.
...and the bad
Of course, not everyone is thrilled. Some people regard it as yet another attempt to make us work even more and are afraid that the business part of business+leisure will overshadow completely the leisure one.
The opposite case could be made as well, of course. We could say that bleisure can be yet another excuse not to work, but it wouldn’t be too unfair since the average (American) business traveller works 240 more hours a year anyway.
Mobile technology is at the core of this ambivalence. It allows us to better balance personal and professional life with things like remote work. But it also means that, if we are not careful, we are mentally carrying work with us 24/7.
At the same time Work Extending Technologies increases expectations: managers and colleagues alike expect work extenders to be almost always available to do work, which makes it easier for work to encroach on family time and also leads to a greater workload. (…) It is a dual-edged sword (Duxbury and Smart, The “Myth of Separate Worlds”, 2011)
Travelers in the USA have become more likely to use internet and mobile technologies to plan, coordinate (and document) their journeys. Although the relationship between multiples devices and work-life balance has been analysed, I am not aware of any studies on the relationship between bleisure and mobile technology. Bleisure doesn’t necessarily mean squeezing half a week after a business trip. It can also mean just taking advantage of the fact that you are in another city to go to a museum or try a new restaurant after the work is done.
Ask yourself: do you sometimes avoid venturing away from the hotel (and meeting room) to keep the stress in check? After all, some of the psychological negative aspects of business travel — and hypermobility in general — comes from “the demand to effectively operate in unfamiliar environments” (Cohen and Gössling, 2015)
At Sam one of the upcoming features we are more excited about is Sam Community: a crowdsourced traveller intelligence filtered contextually.Meaning only the tips relevant to you will be displayed. More ephemeral information — like a delay at the boarding gate — will coexist with more “permanent” tips like when is the free museums night in the city you’re staying or the route locals take to get to the airport.
Whether finally our users will use it to provide tips that will help people to squeeze a little bit of leisure in their business is yet to be seen.
For now, we would love to hear what’s your position on this debate. Let us know via Twitter.
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