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Businesses Turn to Videoconferencing, Webcasts; Ripple Effects Cascade Down to Hotels
By Katherine Yung, The Dallas Morning News
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

Sep. 18--As Corporate America scrambles for ways to conduct business without using airplanes, it is increasingly turning to electronic technology. 

To cope with the uncertainties hanging over air travel, many companies Monday began lining up teleconferencing and videoconferencing services and investigating methods of Internet communication -- in addition to driving, using Amtrak or simply postponing or canceling events altogether. 

Many businesses have been putting a sharp pencil to their travel budgets for a while, but last week's attack provides new incentive. 

The image of planes striking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "is seared into people's minds," said Verizon Communications Inc. spokesman Bill Kula in Irving. Though the company expects eventually to use air travel widely again, it may be "a long time before [some employees] are comfortable flying." 

That discomfort, plus the prospect of delays and higher costs, has many embracing technology. 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. canceled a popular meeting it hosts every year at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., for Wall Street analysts. The 225 people scheduled to fly in Oct. 2 will be invited instead to participate in a three-hour Internet "Webcast," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for the world's biggest retailer. 

Crossmark Inc., a Plano-based consulting and marketing firm, cut travel 40 percent this week and will substitute a closed-circuit videoconference for a national management meeting it had scheduled for Dallas in November. 

It already planned to use more video-conferencing, said spokesman Jeff Rice, but what had been a two-year program now is an eight-month one. 

To be sure, teleconferencing and video-conferencing technology has long been hyped as a substitute for business travel but has never lived up to that billing. 

"We have heard this in the past, and it has been a myth," said A. Michael Noll, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications. He predicted that the current surge in interest will fade, too, because face-to-face meetings are still important. 

Yet for now, enthusiasm is running high. Dallas-based Cytoclonal Pharmaceutics Inc. is looking into substituting telephone conferences for some meetings. The drug company began examining equipment on Friday, said Joan Gillett, vice president and controller. 

"It makes a lot of sense with people that we work with regularly," she said. 

However, Cytoclonal still will probably meet investors and analysts in person, she said. The company had one such meeting booked next Tuesday in New York City and will reschedule it. 

In Fort Worth, Toby Darden, chief executive of Quicksilver Resources Inc., was also hastening plans Monday to conduct video conferencing. His oil and natural gas company employs 310 workers in Texas, Wyoming, Montana and Alberta, Canada, and "we are certainly going to do all we can by video conferencing," he said. 

Mr. Darden was stuck at a hotel in mid-Manhattan when Tuesday's terror began. 

The Internet also may allow some people to use videoconferencing-like services at a low cost and with minimal setup. Web cameras that retail for under $100 can transform computers with high-speed Internet connections into instant picture phones. 

While they're currently popular with teen-agers and families, they also could apply in some corporate situations. "It's not full-motion video," said David Goldstein, president of Dallas-based Channel Marketing Corp. "But for a $100 camera and an existing connection, it's not too bad." 

SBC Communications Inc., the San Antonio-based phone company, said Monday demand for its conferencing services has tripled. Large financial services and airline companies started using those services last week to manage the crisis and have kept up the pace. 

"On Tuesday, a major [air] carrier requested that we literally give them 500 audio conference ports that we would close off to others," said Sharon Chon, SBC's director of collaboration services. The airline is still using them. 

On Monday, companies also started setting up smaller calls of 40-50 people to conduct day-to-day business. 

Teleconferencing isn't cheap. SBC, for example, charges 45 cents a minute per line for conference calls that require an operator and 25 cents a minute per line for calls that need no assistance. 

Similarly, Richardson-based Teleportec Inc. has received several telephone calls about its videoconferencing system, which allows people to interact with each other, said Duffie White, Teleportec's chief executive. 

Some companies that haven't yet figured out if technology can substitute for travel may have to postpone or cancel events. Plano-based Dr Pepper/7-Up Inc. is reviewing its annual bottler meeting set for Oct. 1-6 in Washington, said spokesman Mike Martin. 

The company uses the meeting of about 800 people to unveil the coming year's marketing and advertising programs. It plans to decide by the end of the week. 

At 7-Eleven Inc., executives postponed a meeting that was to be held in Tokyo this week until November. 

Aurum Technology of Plano, which provides information technology services to community banks and credit unions, is also cutting some short-stay travel and may increase its use of video conferencing, chief executive Paul Duckham said. 

But he worries about becoming too distant. "There is no substitute for face-to-face meetings; we just may not be able to do as many of them," he said. 

The ripple effects of fewer travelers continue to cascade down to hotels, restaurants and some tourist attractions. 

The Doubletree Hotel and Executive Meeting Center in Plano has had a number of meetings canceled through the end of the month, said Rusty Wallace, general manager. Some large ones have involved as many 450 rooms. 

"It's been a major hit for our industry," said Sandi Bailey, executive director of the Hotel/Motel Association of Greater Dallas. One local hotel reported losing $300,000 worth of business in the first two days after the attacks, she said. 

Three conventions scheduled last week at the Arlington Convention Center were canceled, said Nadine Felix, center director. One, the Church Ministries National Sunday School Convention, was supposed to attract 4,800 people and would have yielded the center $16,500 in rent. 

The 310-room Hilton Arlington has had at least eight groups cancel events, said Lon Yaeger, general manager. 

At the Dallas Museum of Art, attendance has dropped significantly. A children's event Sunday didn't draw big crowds, and the museum canceled a symposium Saturday on artist Piet Mondrian because of difficulty getting curators and art historians to Dallas. 

About a quarter of the museum's 400,000 annual visits is from tourism, said Judy Connor, marketing director. 

Staff writers Vikas Bajaj, Maria Halkias, Charlene Oldham, Steve Quinn, Sudeep Reddy, Kevin Shay and Dianne Solis contributed to this report. 

-----To see more of The Dallas Morning News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dallasnews.com/ 

(c) 2001, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. VZ, WMT, CYPH, KWK, SBC, SE, 


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