Is meeting a client worth a flight, a hotel stay, and a day away from everything else you need to do? When you can discuss a proposal over video without leaving your desk, it is a fair question. Some research even suggests that meeting face-to-face could be worth considerably more money and lead to more closed deals. But before anyone starts approving every travel request, those attention-grabbing numbers need a closer look.
Your Client Might Actually Want You There
The simplest place to begin is with the client. McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse Survey gathered responses from nearly 4,000 business decision-makers across 13 countries. It found that preferences broadly split into thirds between in-person interactions, remote communication, and digital self-service. Apparently, even business customers cannot agree on whether they want a meeting, a video call, or to be left alone with a website.
Interest in meeting face-to-face was stronger when buyers were dealing with something unfamiliar. Forty-one percent preferred an in-person channel when interacting with a new supplier, while 40 percent preferred one when making a purchase for the first time. That gives sellers a reason to consider visiting early in a relationship. It also means nearly 60 percent did not select in-person contact in either situation.
The same research found that modern B2B customers use an average of 10 interaction channels during their purchasing journey. A company website, in-person sales, and video conferences were the three most frequently used points of contact. Buyers are not necessarily choosing between an entirely digital relationship and a traditional traveling salesperson. They may research online, meet in person, ask follow-up questions over video, and eventually complete the purchase through another channel.
Those figures tell us what buyers prefer, but they do not prove that a visit makes someone more likely to buy. Before booking anything, ask what the client would find useful about meeting. Propose something specific, such as reviewing a solution with the people who will eventually use it, and ask whether doing that on-site would help. That conversation may validate the trip, or save both sides from a meeting that never needed an airport.
Does Meeting In Person Actually Close More Deals?
An Accor survey provides some of the most dramatic figures supporting face-to-face meetings. The hotel group surveyed 9,000 business travelers across nine countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, India, and Australia. Respondents believed they could close 37 percent more deals and generate 36 percent more revenue if all their important meetings happened in person. They also considered one face-to-face meeting as valuable as three video meetings.
Those numbers are certainly tempting, but they measure expectations rather than actual sales records. The respondents were estimating what they believed would happen if they held more meetings in person. Accor also benefits commercially when companies send employees on trips and book hotel rooms. The survey shows that business travelers have considerable faith in face-to-face meetings, but it does not prove they really close 37 percent more deals.
A 2025 report from the Global Business Travel Association and the American Society of Travel Advisors examined actual company data. Its analysis covered more than 3,200 US companies and found that a 1 percent increase in travel and entertainment spending was associated with a 0.2 percent rise in revenue. The researchers used an instrumental-variable model designed to address the possibility that successful companies simply spend more because they already earn more. They reported that the relationship remained after accounting for company size, industry, number of locations, and travel-policy enforcement.
That is stronger evidence, but it was produced for two organizations that benefit from travel and still cannot tell a company whether one particular client visit will pay for itself. The data included many kinds of travel, such as conferences, training, internal meetings, site visits, and client work. The report said more research was needed to understand how factors including trip purpose, sales opportunity, opportunity cost, and relationship value affect the return. Deloitte’s 2025 US corporate travel research also found that about one in five surveyed travel managers identified greater demand for face-to-face contact with clients, partners, and vendors as their company’s top driver of travel growth. At the same time, 54 percent placed costs among the three biggest factors restricting travel.
Brainstorming May Be Worth The Flight
Creative collaboration provides one of the clearest reasons to put people in the same room. Research published in Nature in 2022 compared pairs working together in person and through videoconferencing. It included a laboratory study and a field experiment conducted across five countries. The researchers found that virtual pairs generated fewer creative ideas than pairs who shared a physical space.
The researchers linked the difference to attention. During video calls, participants focused heavily on the screen, which appeared to narrow their visual and cognitive focus. People working together in person could look around their shared environment more freely. That wider attention was associated with generating more creative ideas.
There was an important exception. When participants had to select which idea to pursue, the researchers found no evidence that virtual pairs were less effective. There was even preliminary evidence that they might be slightly better at that part of the task. Being together appeared to help people develop possibilities, but it was not necessary for choosing between them.
That distinction can help determine whether a client trip makes sense. If a customer knows something is not working but has not identified the solution, an in-person workshop may be worth the expense. Once the possible answers are on the table, the follow-up discussion could happen online. You can travel for the part that benefits from a shared room without turning every stage of the project into another hotel stay.
Some Meetings Really Could Have Been Video Calls
More recent negotiation research challenges the assumption that meeting face-to-face always produces better financial results. A 2026 study involved 400 participants forming 200 pairs who negotiated through face-to-face interaction, video, audio, or live text messaging. Researchers measured both financial and nonfinancial outcomes. Face-to-face, video, and audio conversations produced broadly comparable results on most measures.
The face-to-face participants reported greater trust than those who negotiated by video or audio. That could matter in a new client relationship or a situation in which people expect to work together for years. However, greater trust did not translate into clearly superior economic results in the experiment. Audio conversations even produced greater joint value than face-to-face meetings in one comparison.
Live text negotiations produced poorer results than the other formats, which suggests that the alternative to traveling should not always be a long email chain or chat window. A focused video or audio conversation can preserve the immediate exchange of questions and answers without requiring anyone to travel. The study also found that personal characteristics and conflict styles affected which communication method worked best. There was no single format that produced the best result for every pair.
This study examined a simulated conflict rather than real salespeople negotiating million-dollar client contracts, so it cannot settle the question by itself. Still, its findings offer a useful warning against assuming that face-to-face meetings automatically generate more money. They may be particularly valuable when trust is the main challenge. When the objective is exchanging information or finalizing well-understood terms, video or audio may accomplish the job just as effectively.
So, Does It Actually Make A Difference?
The evidence supports a qualified yes. Meeting in person appears especially useful when a client prefers it, the relationship is new, trust needs attention, or people must develop ideas together. Company-level data also connects greater travel spending with higher revenue. What the research does not provide is a reliable promise that every flight will close a deal or return a fixed amount of money.
Before approving a trip, decide what a successful visit should produce. It might be an agreed project scope, several possible solutions, access to key decision-makers, or the resolution of an issue that has held up the deal. Make sure the people needed to achieve that result will actually attend. Nothing tests your patience quite like flying across the country only to discover that the person who can approve the project is working from home.
Afterward, document what was decided, who is responsible for each task, and when the next steps should happen. Then compare the outcome with the cost and purpose of the trip. A sale that arrives three months later does not automatically prove that one dinner or workshop caused it. But if meeting in person created progress that another video call probably could not, the journey may have earned its place on the expense report.
