You're generally right. It's expensive to have people traveling, so they usually reserve it for the executive and studio head levels. Those folks do the bulk of the traveling since they're the ones who need to meet with people from multiple studios - usually to see project progress, ask questions, and get answers. Being in the studio means that the people representing the studio can pull in other studio workers and subject experts as needed to answer specific questions.

I usually travel for work once or twice a year, mostly because I'm a permanently remote developer now and my studio wants to pull us in for face to face time every so often in order to build team cohesion. The main goal is to reinforce the relationships within the team, and having events where we can meet up in person helps a lot with that. Fully remote studios will have regular on-site meetups at venues and such for similar reasons. Add in a conference or two and that's pretty much my total travel allowance.

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