A friend of mine used to be an ‘expert’ for a management consultancy. His job consisted of travelling to various towns and cities far from home, answering questions from a client for an hour, then doing some sightseeing. He’d spend the night in a hotel (paid for by the company) and travel home the next day.
He was made redundant last year. Now that it turns out experts can dial into meetings on Zoom, sessions that used to consume two days and require travel and accommodation costs will in future take one hour and cost nothing. As a result, his company will need fewer experts. I very much doubt that his company is alone. Far more, even, than changes to commuting, changes to business travel look like being one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.
Given that a typical business traveller was worth (from memory) around twice the income per mile of a commuter, this is going to mean lasting impacts on train companies’ revenue – and is going to require some new thinking if rail revenues are not going to collapse.