Business travel is under scrutiny. Corporations, responding to weakening profits, have targeted travel as an immediate candidate for cost savings. In addition, meetings and incentive travel have been recently maligned in public forums as excessive. Perhaps more than at any other time in recent history, business travel is being evaluated from all sides.
To be useful, this evaluation should center on a fundamental business question: what is the relationship of business travel to company performance? Of course business travel generates significant economic value through its direct injections into the transport, hospitality, and other service sectors. This is not to be ignored. But the real value of business travel relates to its impact on individual company performance and, by extension, the performance of the U.S. economy. This study seeks to define exactly this. 

Can webconferences, videoconferences and other virtual meetings really take the place of face-to-face contact?
With travel budgets slashed in the wake of recessionary belt-tightening, companies are increasingly turning to technology as a substitute for in-person contact. Yet business executives overwhelmingly agree that face-to-face meetings are not just preferable but necessary for building deeper, more profitable bonds with clients and business partners and maintaining productive relationships with co-workers.