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Boeing CEO David Calhoun has access to corporate aircraft as part of his job. Even so, he told an interviewer that he didn’t expect to fly nearly as much to internal corporate meetings after the pandemic.

Mr. Calhoun, like some of his colleagues, found that video calling was remarkably effective in checking in with coworkers, allowing him to schedule more meetings and schedule them with minimal notice, according to a report in “Leading At A Distance”. a recent book by James M. Citrin and Autovermietung DeRosa.

“I’ll be doing as much or more customer trips because that’s still the most important way to build relationships,” Calhoun told the writers. “But most of the trips when you run large corporations are visiting your own teams. I am nowhere near going to do that. “

There is broad consensus that the frequency we fly to work and what we travel for will change significantly after the pandemic. Whoever travels can also be different. This, in turn, will lead to changes in the travel industry’s offerings for business professionals, which made up nearly a third of their sales prior to the pandemic.

A year and a half of foregoing virtually all videoconferencing travel and doing business has led many business professionals to conclude that many of their previous trips have not been worth the time and toll on their bodies and spirits, families and the surrounding area. That is even before considering the role travel played in spreading the virus across continents.

There are a popular meme: “This meeting could have been an email.” Those of us who have traveled long distances for a single work meeting know that often we might as well say, “This business trip could have been a Zoom call”.

And before travel regains full speed, some organizations and individuals are taking steps to contain it. The pressure is greatly increased by commitments many companies make to reduce their emissions – goals that often include reducing the carbon footprint of employee business travel.

One scenario is what Mr. Calhoun suggested: Companies could drastically reduce entire categories of travel, such as face-to-face meetings with internal colleagues in other cities. For example, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal last year estimated that in-house meetings and training made up 20 percent of all business travel and predicted that 40 to 60 percent would be permanently lost. The Journal concluded that 19 to 36 percent of business trips would be eliminated. Bill Gates made a prediction at the DealBook conference last fall that business travel would still be more than 50 percent lower after normalization.

Unlike domestic vacation trips that has largely recovered, Business travel has come back relatively slowly. Only 9 percent of businesses say they have resumed their pre-pandemic travel levels A recent poll by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. United Airlines and Delta Airlines both recently said business travel is about 60 percent below pre-pandemic levels, despite an increase in recent months. Rising coronavirus cases in recent weeks could further delay business travel recovery.

But Mr. Calhoun’s plan to reduce his own internal travel echoes the results of the Association of Auditors’ survey, which found that two-thirds of companies allowed travel for sales or customer meetings, while fewer allowed travel for internal purposes or training programs.

Initial indications are that most companies will be reluctant to drastically reduce the estimated two-thirds of business trips, which include sales pitches and customer visits, conferences, and professional services such as consulting. Executives are wary of losing to a rival who actually shows up in person or seeing an important contract fall away due to poor virtual communication. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said: in May that customers told him that his bank had lost business when “bankers from the other guys came over and ours didn’t”.

Scott Kirby, United Chief Executive Officer, Predicted earlier this year “Full recovery in business demand because business travel is about relationships.” On a conference call with investors, he added, “You can’t build human relationships with a medium like this.”

Daily business briefing

Updated

July 30, 2021, 7:43 p.m. ET

Others see the potential for business travel as well, as more and more dispersed workers have to regroup on a regular basis.

“The thing we call business travel could actually grow in the years to come,” said Lindsay Nelson, chief experience and brand officer at Tripadvisor, the online travel company. “But the kind of people who travel and what they travel for will change.”

Ms. Nelson predicted that remote working arrangements mean more employees will return to their corporate offices. Instead of an elite subgroup of employees who are constantly flying out of a headquarters, a larger percentage of employees will fly to headquarters or to external meeting places to meet.

Such a shift could lead hotels and airlines to rethink their loyalty programs, usually geared towards the intense street warrior, to attract business from regular but less frequent travelers. Ms. Nelson said such travelers may be on the lookout for other perks, such as an extension of the flexible flight cancellation policy that was in place during the pandemic. Another trend that the industry could do justice to: Almost 90 percent of business travelers interviewed by SAP Concur recently said they plan to combine personal vacation time with their business travel for the next year.

But instead of simply accepting that business travel is picking up again, companies can use the changed practices of the past year to start a new chapter in their approach. A compelling reason for this is the environmental impact, especially as organizations strive to reduce their climate footprint.

Commercial air traffic is responsible for approx. 3 to 4 percent of total US greenhouse gas emissions. Traveling in first class can cause up to four times as much emissions as in the back of the aircraft due to the lower density of seats.

At the Zurich reinsurance company Swiss Re, for example, flights accounted for around two thirds of the company’s carbon footprint. As part of its efforts to achieve net zero emissions, the company took the decline in business travel last year as an opportunity to reduce its carbon footprint in a more sustainable manner. Employee air travel declined about 80 percent compared to 2018 last year, and the company expects this year to be 30 percent or more down from the 2018 baseline.

Swiss Re began charging a significant carbon surcharge on the flights purchased by its 13,200 employees in January – about $ 500 on top of the price of a flight ticket from Zurich to New York. Team budgets can absorb these fees – which Swiss Re uses to fund carbon offsets and cuts – as their employees fly less.

But with trips coming back and pushing the surcharges into the budget, the goal is to force employees to think more carefully about whether or not it’s actually necessary when booking a trip.

“We still have to travel to meet clients – but maybe not that often,” said Mischa Repmann, Senior Environmental Management Specialist at Swiss Re. “We can bring trips together, we can travel more carefully than before.”

Other companies are going in a similar direction. Foreclosure announced in April plans to reduce the CO2 emissions of its own business travel as a percentage of sales by 50 percent compared to 2019. Deloitte has announced the goal of reducing business travel emissions per employee by 50 percent by 2030. EY’s goal aims to reduce emissions from business travel by 35 percent between 2019 and 2025.

Companies not only reduce the number of flights, but also take advantage of them computer identify the least emission-intensive meeting places, as some participants can reach by train. And some experiment with “Cluster meeting“, Where participants gather at nearby hub locations and virtually connect with those in other regional clusters.

Environmentalist and author Paul Hawken calls flying long distances for business meetings “a catastrophically monumental waste of resources,” arguing that companies would do better with fewer business trips. “We just got a good lesson on how to be effective without moving the protoplasm,” he said.

It would be easy for organizations to revert to their old practices, and many will likely do so. But their environmental goals will make some companies rethink who is traveling and why. And although we know the limits of video meetings well, there are compelling reasons not to travel and to settle in with Zoom.

Mr. Delaney is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Charter, a media and services company focused on workplace transformation.

What do you think? Should companies cut their business trips indefinitely? As? Let us know: dealbook@nytimes.com.