Will Technology Really Displace Business Travel This Time?

from the trendwatching dept

For many, many years, there's been talk about how business travel was living on borrowed time, because it was going to be replaced by things like videoconferencing that offered the same benefits at a cheaper price and with less hassle. But every time this sort of boom is predicted, it fails to materialize. After 9/11, video and web conferencing took off for about three months when travel dropped, but then use fell right back down. Several months ago, more such predictions were made with oil prices driving the cost of business travel through the roof, and now, the motivation is apparently the drive to cut costs. For instance, Cisco's CEO John Chambers says that by using the company's own communications technology, it's been able to slice its per-employee travel spending by more than half, and that it won't increase again, even after the recession. Of course, as the NYT notes, Chambers is making a look-how-we-eat-our-own-dog-food sales pitch. But it's worth wondering if a prolonged recession could finally give these travel-replacement technologies the boost they've long been looking for, and supplant business travel, rather than just add to it, as they have largely done thus far.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Time For A Moron In A Hurry To Explain The Difference Between Microprocessors And A Trip To China

from the it's-not-that-hard,-really dept

Intel is famous for being overly aggressive in trying to enforce its trademark, often claiming rights over almost any use of the prefix "intel" to anyone using the phrase "something inside," even if it's completely unrelated to the business that Intel is in. Trademark, of course, is not intended to give a company "ownership" of a word or phrase. Instead, it's a consumer protection system, designed to prevent consumers from being tricked into believing that they're buying a good from one company instead of another. That's why trademarks are only applicable in the business area that the company is using the mark. Thus, Johnny's Soda doesn't interfere with a trademark on Johnny's Dry Cleaning -- because they're totally separate businesses. That's also why we have the moron in a hurry test. If a "moron in a hurry" is unlikely to be confused by the use of the mark, then there's no trademark infringement.

Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped Intel from trying. Over the years they've gone after a maker of jeans (Intel Jeans), a marketing firm (for using the term INTELMARK for one of its products) and an artist's cooperative for using the name "Art Inside") among various other cases over the years. Its latest is to go after a travel agency called Intellife Travel that books trips between the US and China. The travel agency clearly explained to Intel that unless Intel's trademark covered the travel business, there was unlikely to be any infringement. Intel took a year to think about it... and then filed a lawsuit. Hopefully, Intel gets smacked down quickly on this clear abuse of trademark law.

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Looking For A Travel Deal? Have Your Browser Do The Walking... Out Of The Country

from the go-local dept

With the Internet, we now have a whole range of options when we need to book travel, ranging from online travel services to "name your own price" services. Whether or not we are better off still is up for debate, but now a new angle has emerged in the quest for lower prices. Booking travel through non-US websites may yield travelers a better deal -- even for the same exact offering. In one example, the rental car price quoted was 58 percent lower when booked through the foreign site. Travel companies defend this practice, claiming that they need to be able to set different prices in different markets in order to compete. But, this is merely the economic principle of price discrimination at work -- if you're able to get a higher price for any reason, then it technically is exactly what the market will bear. The mere fact that American customers visit different websites than Spanish customers naturally segments the market. So, by being able to increase their utilization by lowering prices in the appropriate markets, the price of the goods is driven down in the long run by this practice. That said, people will still be pissed off by this practice because buying from a different website does not seem like a "reasonable" explanation for that price difference. At least companies have not implemented higher prices for the wealthy -- that would definitely raise some eyebrows.

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