2017 U.S.-Booked Air Volume: $201 million
Technology conglomerate Cisco in 2017 spent slightly less on
U.S.-booked air volume than it did in 2016, according to a BTN estimate.
Company revenue for its 2017 fiscal year, which ended July 29, 2017, declined
about 2.5 percent year over year to $48 billion.
Cisco operates mature travel and strategic meetings
management programs and in recent years notably shifted its hotel procurement
philosophy, agreeing to multiyear deals with large hotel companies that provide
lower room rates in exchange for hotel revenue generated instead of room-night
commitments. The company in recent years also began to offer its travelers mobile
booking capabilities and online training.
Cisco requires all company meetings to be registered in its
online events portal. The company employs an SMM team and outsources many
aspects of meeting planning and production. Of the roughly 11,000 meetings registered
with Cisco's events portal in 2017, the meetings management team secured
planning services for about 4,000.
In fiscal year 2017, the company reduced its carbon
emissions related to business air travel by less than 4 percent to 177,210
metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Cisco in fiscal year 2012 set a goal
to cut such emissions 40 percent by fiscal year 2017 from a fiscal year 2007
baseline. That didn't happen, with emissions registering about 11 percent lower
than 2007 figures, largely due to an increase in global sales activity and the
number of Cisco employees.
Cisco leans on its own remote conferencing products to help
limit business air travel. The company has deployed more than 1,500 of its
TelePresence immersive videoconferencing rooms at its offices throughout the
world, and Webex desktop conferencing is available to all employees with
company laptops, among other collaboration solutions.
The company had about 72,900 employees in July 2017,
slightly less than the 73,700 reported one year earlier.