While travel woes in Europe due to the Icelandic volcano have grabbed all the headlines, buried in all the press is an interesting statistic; web traffic and video conferencing has shot up too…way up.
According to Hitwise, visits to aviation related sites have doubled and traffic to the Eurostar train service site (which connects the U.K. to Europe) have risen 67%.
And then there’s web video. BT Group Plc, the largest fixed-line phone company in the U.K., says demand for video and audio conferencing has jumped by 35%. And not missing the marketing opportunity, several conferencing providers are now offering their services for free…until the volcano thing clears up.
Officials are calling it a case of “you don’t really appreciate the value of something until you need it”. As in lots of businesses have been on the fence about video meetings…but now they’re finding them awfully attractive. Still, no predictions have been made on whether businesses will continue to find video meetings attractive once air travel returns to normal.