Business Travel Tips

Business travel is a necessity for some professions and can range from being on the road day in and day out to more infrequent but longer trips away from your office.

There are some tips however that are common to all trips and can help save time and stress:

Know your itinerary. Whether you are planning and arranging your trip yourself or it will be co-ordinated by a PA, travel department or conference organisers, make sure you know where you are going (addresses and contact details) and when you are meant to arrive and depart. Keep a copy of this on you (not in your luggage). That way, if your bags should go astray, at least you will be able to get to your destination.

Keep a modified version of your itinerary with your luggage. Whilst you do not want to include home address details in this until you are on your return leg, at least your bags have a chance of finding their way back to you if they do go astray.

If you travel away from home regularly, keep a spare wash bag ready and packed with small trial size items of toiletries. This should speed up the packing process and means you should not forget any single item.

Take things to read with you for delays or just for those times when you are waiting to start the next step of your journey. Cut out articles from magazines and periodicals or professional articles that you have been meaning to read and take them with you. It is also a good idea to do this when you are not away travelling to make beneficial use of delays before meetings etc.

Aim to be early, if you can. Some schedules do not allow for it (connecting journeys, for example), but at the start of a trip do not find yourself rushing to make the plain or train. If you miss the first departure, all the others are going to be delayed far more as you try to rearrange, to say nothing of the increased stress.

Let people know how they can contact you, or in your absence who they should contact. Put an auto responder message on you email so that people who send you a message know you are away. If you will not be picking up mail tell them and let them know what to do if the message is urgent. This should help reduce the number of outstanding messages you need to deal with on your return.