Will Cisco's travel policies become the norm?

By The Economist | WASHINGTON DC

DESPITE selling high-end "telepresence" video conferencing suites to other major companies, Cisco was in the top 25 for business travel spending last year. The company is unlikely to repeat that performance this year after slashing huge amounts from its travel budget, the Dallas Morning Newsreported on Friday. Susan Lichtenstein, who worked to slash Cisco's travel costs, told the Morning News that her team has already cut more than 50 percent of the company's travel expenses. Travel Procurement magazine had previously suggested those expenses totaled some $300 million.

Cisco's cuts included prohibiting almost all travel for internal meetings and "pushing employees to videoconference instead of fly"—unsurprising considering Cisco's big talk about its "telepresence" video conferencing technology. The Morning News article suggests airlines and hotels are deeply worried about more companies following Cisco's lead and drastically cutting travel costs. But if Cisco, of all companies, was still spending hundreds of millions of dollars on business travel as recently as 2008, how worried should airlines and hotels really be?