In our super hi-tech and super connected IT world, I have always supported the view that virtual meetings through conference calls, video calls, webinars and all the other means we use to communicate can never replace a firm hand-shake and a face-to-face meeting. Now this was my own personal opinion, so I was delighted to hear that this has been substantiated in a study undertaken by CT Business Travel who have demonstrated that face-to-face meetings really matter. This will also be music to the ears of both b2b and b2c exhibition organisers, who want to validate their increasing space costs by showing there is still a place for that type of supply and demand interaction.
During their research (the latest infographic from CT Business Travel was the result of extensive research garnered in collaboration with external agency, Neomam Studios) into whether face-to-face meetings still had a place in the modern business place, it was uncovered that 95% of professionals believe face to face meetings are key to successful business relationships and that a virtual meeting can never quite substitute meeting someone in the flesh. Technical Director, Thomas Kempster comments on these findings: “As someone who is heavily involved in and always reading about the latest technology and being very aware that virtual meetings were now pretty commonplace, I think it was pretty surprising that so many professionals are still so focused on face to face meetings – and the most surprising thing of all was that 80% of Millennials actually prefer face to face!”
In support of their findings, CT Business Travel has also announced that over 80% of their clients have booked travel in the past year in order to further client relationships with face to face meetings. Neomam Founder, Danny Ashton, comments on his teams’ role in this project: “We were really excited to work with CT Business Travel on this project and we’re really pleased with the positive feedback we’ve had on the results. Business Travel was fairly new to us so this provided a great challenge for us to rise to.” And it wasn’t just the collaborators who were interested in the stats uncovered by their research, the team’s infographic depiction of their findings was also published by Inc., Entrepreneur, Design Taxi and Site Pro News, amongst a number of other highly influential business sites.
CT Business Travel have produced research in an easily digestible format in order to support those ambitious to grow their business; with a view to helping them to understand when they should be adopting the latest technology and when they should be utilising face-to-face meetings.
