Adjusting to life in the midst of a pandemic has me thinking about how much companies, business people, and the general public just take flying for granted and use it exponentially without being aware of its impact on the planet. After reading more about this, I wanted to write this article to put my thoughts into words.
Business tourism is a thing!
In 2019, the United States generated more than one-third of the global travel expenditure. According to international travel statistics, 1.3 million people travel for business every day in the U.S. alone! We’re always looking for the quickest ways to work and get to places in this forever buzz-ticking world. What if we just paused for a second, and started looking at the bigger picture and started asking ourselves, “Do I really need to attend this meeting in person?” “Can it be done digitally?” “If not, then what alternative to a short flight can I choose?”
I'm a man of travel myself.
I love hopping around and discovering new places. Still, lately, I have realized that there are different (better and smarter) ways of doing this – for example, should I be required to attend a meeting, I could go there by train instead of by plane. I could also consider extending my trip. Let me explain. I am talking about creating more leisure – business and leisure – trips! Why wouldn’t we look at doing the unthinkable, mixing business with pleasure to do the best we can to help reduce carbon emission for our beloved planet? Instead of attending a meeting and flying straight back, why not just extend your stay for a week or two? Considering remote working is the new way of life, you can work from everywhere. Air travel is by far the most damaging way of traveling for our planet. As WWF mentions traveling by train results in a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions versus traveling by plane.
A blessing in disguise
Mother Nature was happy to see COVID settle in and take over our lives so that she could start breathing again. The virus has now been controlling our lives for over a year, forcing us to figure out new ways of working, which has led to a steep decline in business travel. To give you a few numbers, the spending around business tourism in the G20 area went from 357.9 billion dollars in 2019 to 109.4 billion in 2020. Our work here at CBA revolves around collaboration. Working together is at the core of our business – we work with our clients and not only for our clients. Even before the pandemic, here at CBA USA, we decided to innovate around ways of working by combining remote workflows with Sprint Mode®, our collaborative and agile service that infuses speed into design strategy, creating solutions with maximum efficiency. Sprint Mode™ enabled us to work collaboratively, even when we are not physically together. The lesson is, there are never problems, only solutions!
Sprint Mode® saves a lot of time on both our side and the client’s and enables us to work quicker! Sprint Mode® can be used anywhere in the world to help manage and create much more efficiently by optimizing lengthy processes and avoiding diary clashing! Working with Sprint Mode® helps reduce meetings, as everyone can interact on the platform directly. Therefore, it contributes to lowering carbon emissions, as it reduces the need for business travel. Our planet needs us. Let’s work and travel smarter!
This article was written by Jean-Marc Rinaldi, CEO of CBA USA.
