Things have trended to doing more remote for years. In the past 5 years, I'd say I've traveled more around 50%. The biggest driver has always been the customer. Old school management tended to believe that they will be cheated if they don't actually see you physically working.
Smart customers started to change 15 years ago due to cost. I spent a year traveling weekly to Disney in Burbank and my travel costs were north of $200,000. That was almost 20 years ago. Many customers have wisely figured out that they can significantly reduce costs AND have more access to their consultants if they aren't spending 20 hours a week traveling. I'm also more likely to take your call at 6:00 pm on Saturday if I didn't have to waste my week traveling.
In addition, more and more customers have started working partial remote schedules themselves. So, why would they want to spend $ having me onsite when they aren't even there. They have been much more intelligent in scheduling people to be onsite when it's really more beneficial to have face-to-face interaction.
Now that almost everyone has been working remotely due to the pandemic, it will become even more SOP. I've asked some of my customers when they expect to be back in the office and some have said, "maybe never." Things have run very smoothly and companies are thinking twice about why they are continuing to invest in physical facilities for roles that can be done remotely.
The remote model doesn't work for everything, but post COVID I expect it to be much more common. Hoping that my travel will be down to 25%. I haven't traveled anywhere in 12 months and it has been fantastic.