How is the relation between business travel as physical presence and digital meetings? How can the metaverse platform, Horizon Workrooms, contribute to business travel? Benefits and challenges! This is the main question for this thesis.
It’s the era of digitalization in general and the corona epidemic reinforced the digital development, not least meetings online. Horizon Workrooms serves as an example of one of the newest digital meeting places in form of virtual reality.
The question is examined through a theoretical approach and through an experiment with 5 participants meeting in Horizon Workrooms and interviewed about the experience and their relations to business travels in general.
What is presented here is the bouquet of themes that shed light on the many aspects and concerns involved in digital and physical business meetings. The themes are stretching from the very big and fundamental question about climate and sustainability; over business like questions concerning the tourism industry; if, how and to what degree digital platforms – and in this case, Horizon Workrooms – can contribute to business meetings and relations; to the more detailed questions concerning pro and cons in relation to be on physical business travel including the time spending and costs and how the concrete meeting with business partners contributes in results, leisure time away and family life issues.