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Companies Rethink Corporate Travel: Page 2 of 4

Instead of flying to meet every customer face-to-face, the company is setting up video conferences and Webinars as an alternative.

Riverstone’s travel this month is down about 15 to 20 percent as a result, he says. But he emphasizes that not all traveling has ceased since the attacks. Just this week, Romulus Pereira, CEO of Riverstone, and other members of the team flew to Asia to meet with potential customers.

Riverstone isn’t alone in its cutbacks. Other companies are also following suit. Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) has restricted all nonessential business travel until the end of this month. The company, which lost a member of its marketing team aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the World Trade Center, canceled a press event that was supposed to be held in Boston this week. The event has been rescheduled for October 2, with media invited to join in via Web conference.

Other companies have consciously not changed their travel schedules, in an attempt to show terrorists through their actions that the U.S. way of doing business will continue. Following the attacks, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) had planned to move a press event that was to take place yesterday in New York City to San Francisco.

"With all the hardships and difficulties over the past two weeks it seemed so out of place to do a product demo," said Ed Zander, COO and president at Sun, who was born and raised in New York City.