Airborne_Again wrote:
I expect that leisure travel by air will return to previous levels unless costs increase markedly (which they might well do) or – for short to medium distances – the railways get their act together on international cooperation and coordination.Business travel is another matter altogether. Now that businesses find that online meetings work pretty well, the number of business trips will not return to previous levels
I expect you’re generally right except that I agree with Peter on the efficacy of online collaboration. About half of my direct reports can work effectively at home, any more and we find it’s below critical mass for creative work.
I’m not saying that videoconferencing can fully replace face-to-face contact, it certainly cannot. Still, I doubt the number of business travellers will be reduced even after Covid-19 is gone for good (if that’s even possible, it might as well remain endemic).
As for leisure travel, that seem even harder to predict. A Der Spiegel article today mentioned how many people (in Germany) saved a lot of cash this year, simply because many activities to spend cash on were cancelled (bars, restaurants, travel etc.). So economists are now debating wheter this spending will simply be delayed or never take place. The number of people with drastically reduced income has been comparatively small so far, due to generous government intervention.
I think there will be significant green political pressure in the EU to curb excessive flights for leisure, that must be taken into account. In Germany, the Green Party is set to enter the national government after the 2021 Bundestag elections, probably as the second strongest party. They will not let airline travel expand unhindered, including on EU level.
I’d suggest the following:
Leisure travel will quickly return to previous levels
Meetings between provider and client will return to normal (it’s hard to build personal relationships with client and develop new business without being able to look them in the eye, shake their hands and share a laugh together. This just isn’t possible over zoom).
Internal company meetings that are collaborative in nature will continue to be done in person. It’s far easier to do things together in person. For some reason (maybe tiny time delays?) it’s far easier to have an interactive conversation in person and easier to be able to hold the the same items in your hand and pass them to someone else.
Internal company meetings that are routine updates and routine management will see some of them staying online. There is little need for many of these meetings and the travel just isn’t needed, and can’t be justified either time wise or cost wise. Some will still be in person, but many will be relegated to a weekly zoom call.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I except that leisure travel by air will return to previous levels unless costs increase markedly
Which they already have, not necessarily by direct means, for example easyJet have reduced their hand luggage to such miserly levels that you’ll have to buy an add-on to carry enough for just a week’s trip: this for us (as it’s 2 legs in each direction) will add around £200 to the price of a trip, in other words “low cost” airlines end up being the price of a legacy airline. So I suspect a lot of families aren’t going to travel – due to COVID and Brexit there’s less money around, and the employment that remains is more precarious so people aren’t going to want to have to spend additional money.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Now that businesses find that online meetings work pretty well,
But do they?
Im not convinced.. just have a look at UTube and see how many “zoom cock-up” vids are out there, hell, even TV media have issues of connectivity on every third interview they do live and they should be well on top of this stuff by now, let alone the average guy in an office used to “calling IT” if something doesnt work. I guess time will tell.
Regards, SD..
Also, I think the focus on deaths of (mainly) very elderly people is distracting from what’s really damaging: there are as many who survive but still haven’t recovered (“long covid”), with no end in sight. People who may live years or decades with severely life-changing effects.
The chances of getting long covid appear to be 0.6%, (around 60,000+ sufferers in the UK) in other words, catching covid has about the same risk of serious injury as taking part in one year of the Isle of Man TT motorcycle races.
MedEwok wrote:
It reads pretty much like the Influenza vaccine side effects. Remember that “very common” means about 10% or more experience the effect. So some people will feel like they are coming down with a fever after the vaccine, experiencing headaches, chills, muscle pain (myalgia) and the like. Probably for no more than a day in most cases. Much better than getting the real thing…as with all vaccines.
Thanks for that clarification. I thought that it may well be a case of layman’s jitters when reading this.
Chemical Compounds in Foods Can Inhibit a Key SARS-CoV-2 Enzyme
One of these is in chocolate 
Could that be why women are much less likely to get ill?
MedEwok wrote:
I think there will be significant green political pressure in the EU to curb excessive flights for leisure, that must be taken into account. In Germany, the Green Party is set to enter the national government after the 2021 Bundestag elections, probably as the second strongest party. They will not let airline travel expand unhindered, including on EU level.
That very same Green Party that in Baden-Württemberg – the state where they are already majority party – radically intervened with the manufacturing of fossil fuel cars by Mercedes and Audi and hence basically shut down the entire south western Germany automotive industry? Just kidding! We know that the Green Party today has little to do with the Green Party 30 years ago…
Therefore I’d not expect that anything changes substantially in terms of leisure travel independently on which party will be in the government (and btw. as the federal government is the biggest investor in Lufthansa these days, it would be economically not really wise…).
My best guess would be that leisure travel will come back to pre Covid levels quite quickly. People might not catch up with the money they haven’t spent in 2020 (therefore this spend is lost and not delayed) but there is a clear desire with many people to travel again. Business travel I see a bit more negative: Yes, we will see more physical meetings again after the lockdown, but it will take a longer time for those “if I take the evening flight from Frankfurt to Delhi, I can do a full day workshop there and fly back with the same plane in the evening so that I don’t even need a hotel room” times of the recent years to come back.
skydriller wrote:
just have a look at UTube and see how many “zoom cock-up” vids are out there
Given the millions of Zoom meetings happening every hour, I wouldn’t say there is many such videos. And if we compare that with how much goes wrong on physical meetings (delayed flights, trains, cars, etc. I don’t see a huge difference – it’s just much harder to do a “funny” Tube vid on a delayed flight than on a broken wifi connection …
Interesting research on population sentiment towards corona measures imposed by the government in Germany which I think quite nicely summarizes the situation in many countries:
“The challenge is, that more than 2/3 of the population believe they have significantly above average understanding of the situation and how a pandemic works. Therefore they believe that while government restrictions are a good and necessary thing for others, for themselves they can decide better when to stick to them and when to ignore them”.
