(business) communications have changed …

I know that’s stating the bleeding obvious but sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves of how much it’s changed and what it used to be like for the business traveller. I’ve had nigh on 50 years of such travel and here’s an outline of what I’ve experienced.

For me it started in the early 70s when I was working in the oil business. Routine text communication was then by telex. Wikipedia describes telex:

Telex is a telecommunication system that allows text-based messages to be sent and received by teleprinter over telephone lines. The term “telex” may refer to the service, the network, the devices, or a message sent using these.^[1] Telex emerged in the 1930s and became a major method of sending text messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage declined as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.

There were no mobile phones at that time of course and in many airports, especially in the US, there were banks of payphones. International phone calls took place through the operator; they were expensive and unreliable.

The net result of this is that the business traveller was largely out of touch, especially when he or she was not at an office with a telex. On the one hand that could be frustrating. On the other it meant that you could not be pestered so that when you were not working you could enjoy the travel.

As Wikipedia noted telex did continue to be used into the 80s and it remained the core form of communication before being replaced by email in the late 80s/early 90s. Fax was complementary and provided a means of text communication with travellers who did not have a telex link. This meant that as you travelled you’d often be getting faxes sent to your hotel.

The mobile phone started to appear in the early 80s when it was a car phone, true mobiles as we know them today didn’t emerge until the early 90s, so you were unlikely to travel with one. However international calling became much easier with International Direct Dialling (IDD) and less outrageously expensive.

Despite the intrusions of the fax and IDD business travel continued to be a pleasure and in fact these technologies reduced the frustration noted above without taking over the traveller’s free time.

But the world began to change in the 90s fuelled by email and the mobile phone although their impact would not be significantly felt until after the millennium. Although email became the standard tool for written communication it was largely the preserve of secretaries and mobile phones were just phones until the advent of first the Blackberry (2000), then the iPhone (2007) and later the Android devices with equivalent functionality.

Although business travel began to experience the adverse impact of the budget airlines it could still be enjoyed despite the use of mobile phones making the traveller easily accessible, at a price. The technology continued to work for the traveller. It was soon to change the way the traveller worked.

In the early 2000s the early internet brought email services which began to give the traveller 24/7 access to email. I remember when you got to a hotel you plugged your laptop into the phone and rang a local number which gave you access to your mailbox wherever you were. That extended your working day and meant that your hotel became your office even if you arrived late at night. The pressure was now on to ‘check-in’ whenever you had the opportunity so that you’d lost the freedom to enjoy the travel that you’d previously enjoyed and had the added frustration of making the local internet connection work.

By 2010 the revolution was complete: the traveller had a smartphone, that meant 24/7 two way accessibility, and business travel lost its charm. No longer would it be an opportunity to do good business and to enjoy the culture and hospitality of other countries. Now it was simply an extension of your day job albeit in another country enjoying the privations of budget airlines and living out of a suitcase.

And let’s remember that as all the above was happening the ‘secretary’ was disappearing. As we all did our own emails it was a cost that companies could save so that when you travelled you no longer had someone back home minding the fort. You have to continue to do that yourself whilst addressing the priorities of your trip. Not easy and no fun.

I’ve done lots of business travel in my time, most of it before the millennium when it could be enjoyed. Since 2010 especially I’ve done very little and what I’ve done I’ve done on my terms so that I can continue to enjoy it. But that’s a luxury that people just starting out don’t have. I don’t envy them.