How Business Travel Differs From Personal Travel
Planning trips for business is a little bit different than planning trips for personal purposes. Even if you’re great at planning your personal holidays you need learn a slightly different skillset for planning business trips. This is especially the case if you’re booking a trip for you and your boss, or several colleagues rather than just you.
Here’s my guide for things to keep in mind when you’re booking business travel.
How much is time worth?
This is probably the most critical question. For example, if it “costs” you 30 minutes of time to pickup a rental car that is offsite vs onsite at the airport, how much is it worth to you to save that 30 minutes.
The answer might depend on:
– Do you need to get to your hotel so you process your emails or do other work projects.
– How many people are involved. If you’re travel with 3 work colleagues, then that’s 30 mins x 4, or 2 hours of company time.
You can use this same time calculation when you’re considering whether a more expensive direct flight is a better idea than a cheaper connecting one.
Premium class travel.
Personally I never travel premium class but I have a friend who swears this allows her to totally avoid jetlag. She looks for options where she can bid on a business class seat.
If you can a day or productivity, how much is that worth for you?
Expensing your travel costs.
When you’re expensing your travel costs and therefore paying in before tax dollars, it often makes much more sense to spend the extra money for more speed and comfort. This consideration often tips the balance regarding things like getting a shuttle vs. getting a taxi from the airport. For estimating taxi fares, this calculator is useful for US travel.
Hotel standards.
It virtually goes without saying that the number 1 concern when booking a hotel on a business trip is the wifi speed and reliability. At minimum, scour reviews for any hint of bad wifi. I will literally phone hotels and ask them to do a speed test on the wifi if I am booking travel for my boss. Know how to create your own hotspot. using the ethernet service in the room.
Another big consideration is noise. If the hotel is in a city centre location make sure the room is on a high floor and away from the elevator. However, sometimes even high floors don’t solve the problem of excessive street noise, sirens etc. Aim to book a hotel that is on a side street rather than the main drag or another busy road.
Also, make sure you book a hotel that has a nice bar or restaurant where you can have meetings. You’ll need this, for example, for your daily briefing with colleagues who’ve travelled with you, or for inviting your local contacts to meet you.
Communication.
You’ll need roaming on your phone. For personal travel, you might get a foreign SIM card. For business travel you need to be accessible on your regular phone number so that the office can call you. Plan in advance what hours you’re going to be available by phone e.g., either your normal work hours, or your normal work hours except for the first 2 hours of the work day, to take into consideration the time difference. Anything more complicated than this will be too complicated for people at home to remember and keep straight.
Don’t forgot to build time for emails and communication into your day. You don’t want to be getting back to your hotel at 11pm after a work dinner and be spending four hours on email because the office has fallen apart without you. Apparently we spend 28% of our working hours on email.
