Many of my clients and colleagues, based out of Singapore, often take on regional roles which requires them to travel a lot. This requirement places them on planes and hotel rooms in neighbouring countries very often, and every time the leave, the activate the dreaded triple "O" (aka Out of office) auto reply email.

After years in the corporate world, I understand the role of this automated response, but today I'm beginning to doubt its usefulness.

I've come to realise that 90% (my guesstimation) of the time the only form of communication people loose while taking a business trip is their desk phone. Email, mobile, IM, VoIP (Skype mostly), and blogs are all just as accessibly from wherever they are. Be it at the airport, in a hotel, or at a remote office.

So why is there still a need to leave an out of office message when it doesn't matter if you're in the office at all? Don't these auto-reply messages end up looking more like spam than useful information?

I'm increasingly making it a point not to leave such messages in auto-responders when I travel. I'll inform my colleagues, and my clients one off, but the rest of the world that needs to contact my via email really doesn't need to receive a piece of spam in return. At most I'll be replying from a different timezone or at worst a day or two late which really doesn't cause much of an issue since my mobile is always on global roaming for urgent matters.