Do Bill Gates’ Business Travel Predictions Make Any Sense?


Skift Take

Will soundbites like "Zoom parties every day, every night" and other headline-grabbing quotes influence perceptions of the value of business travel, or do we take them with a pinch of salt?

Bill Gates predicts the number of business trips will halve in the future, and with that statement becomes the latest big name to throw their viewpoint into the mix. “My prediction would be that over 50 percent of business travel, and over 30 percent of days in the office, will go away,” the co-founder of Microsoft said during a New York Times event this week. “Now that it’s not the gold standard to say ‘yes, you flew all the way over to sit in front of me,' and that you can do the virtual connection, it will be a very high threshold for actually doing that actual business trip.” Gates also shared how he felt bad for African leaders who were always traveling to the U.S. and Europe to attend conferences, when they had more important work to do in their own countries. “They sp