Analysis of Business Travel Costs and Face-to-Face Meetings

Body Language & Banter 83 Smiles Fake or Real in person. No great treaty or big industrial contract has been negotiated without a face-to-face meeting. We see this daily: people talking on the phone get to a certain point, give up, and arrange to meet in person. The consequence is that we spend $550 billion annually, flying around the globe to meet each other. Each day the world’s population takes three million plane flights. Around 80% of these are business flights. Some are people emigrating or going to do specific manual tasks, but most are to have meetings. We have always assumed that this is because the parties are unable to reach a sufficient level of trust over the phone and need face-to-face interaction to build that trust, but it may be that the parties are not able to convey sufficient information to fully understand each other. Face-to-face meeting may convey much more information than we think. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015773