making business trips
Business Travel Made Easy
Summary: Cancelled flights … lost luggage … presentation programs that won’t run … the list of potential business trip challenges is virtually endless. In fact, when it comes to business travel, it seems that problems and delays are the norm, not the exception. The key is to be prepared for anything that comes your way. Only then will arriving at your destination be as simple as your morning drive into the office.
Unfortunately, most business travelers are unprepared for even the smallest of travel glitches. And although they may have made numerous business trips in the past, each with its own problem or two, people still don’t plan for setbacks when the next trip rolls around. As a result, they get frustrated when traveling and view business trips as a hassle they wish they could avoid.
If you have to travel for business, take the approach that everything will go wrong. That way you’re prepared to handle whatever comes your way and no challenge will derail your business plans. Following are the key steps to take before, during, and after a trip to make business travel as stress-free as possible.
1. Your pre-flight preparations
* Create your travel binder. This is a small binder (5″ x 11″) that will hold all your travel document essentials. In your binder include your airline ticket (or electronic ticketconfirmation), photo identification, passport (if needed), expense log, receipt envelope or pocket, cash, passes or membership cards, and your frequent flyer or frequent stay identification numbers. To minimize the number of frequent guest cards you need to carry, laminate a single card that has all of your frequent flyer and frequent stay identification numbers and information. Keep your travel binder with you at all times, in an outside pocket of your carry-on bag.
* When you choose your flight, never reserve the last flight scheduled before you need to be at your destination, even if that means arriving at your destination a day early. Why? Because you need to plan that something will go wrong with your flight and you’ll need to catch the next flight out. If the meeting or event you’re attending is critical, then make sure you have two flight times you can fall back on. Remember, flights get cancelled, grounded, and delayed every day. You need a backup so you can still make it to your destination on time.
Extended Business Travel – Top 5 Tips
How often have you had to pack for a week long business trip? Tough, right? You need to somehow fit everything you need in one bag that’s not too huge (or you’ll regret it), but it still has enough business wear and casual wear clothes in it that you aren’t a rumpled smelly mess by the end of the trip. How do you do it? Here are my top 5 tips:
1. Get the right bag. Which means get a roll-along, soft-sided, expandable garment bag that folds and zips up into a smaller, more manageable size. Don’t go cheap or it will be a throw-away inside a year (I mean spend hundreds, not less than a hundred). You need expandable because your clothes take up more space after you’ve worn them (unless you fold them up all neatly the same way you packed them – which is very doubtful).
2. Recycle pants, but don’t recycle shirts. Pants will survive 2-3 days of wear, but shirts barely survive one. This translates into 3 pairs of pants and 6-7 dress shirts. Does that seem like too many shirts? It’s not because you need a spare one in case of emergencies. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve trashed a shirt and had to pull out the spare.
3. Save the plastic bags you get from the dry cleaners and make a pile in your closet. Then when it’s time to pack, you lay your shirts and pants (still on the hangers) in the bag one at a time and put a plastic bag in between each one. This allows the shirts and pants to slide a little when you open and close the bag without causing them to catch on each other and cause wrinkles. No more ironing in the hotel room late at night.
4. Get a waterproof toiletry bag. If you don’t have one then you can basically make one by using freezer bags for all your liquids and then stuffing them inside your toiletry bag. I had a bottle of aftershave smash open on me and soak into all my clothes one time, and that’s all it took to convince me to take this precaution seriously.
5. Take the time to come up with a system for how to pack. Experiment and try different configurations. Give yourself a couple hours to do this. Lay socks and underwear and t-shirts and shoes in on top of each other in different ways after you’ve put all your dress shirts and pants in. Where should you put the toiletry bag? Your prescriptions? Your food stash? Each garment bag is different and you’ll need to figure out the optimum configuration. Do this once and you’ll have it figured out for all the rest of your trips and you can pack again without thinking.
Business Travel
It does not matter if you are a frequent business traveler or just an occasional one, but when you are going on a business travel, the best thing is to do it the right way. Most of the companies have policies in place which is to control the cost for employee trips and when you plan your business travel, the best thing to do would be to follow each and every guideline and to ensure that your travel plans are approved and reimbursed and that you do not incur any expenses for the trip.
1) Firstly, you have to perform a thorough discussion with your supervisor regarding the destination, the number of nights you are away and the method of travel which you have chosen. Also, include under this discussion personal vehicle, rental car and air travel. Make sure that you inquire about your company’s travel procedures from your boss.
2) Make sure that you make prior contact with the person you are meeting on your business travel and also ask for the name of a neighboring hotel. In case you get hold of hotel maps and bookings, it will be of great help for reserving your travel plans. In case, if your company actually uses only a particular hotel chain, then you can skip this step.
3) You can search for the travel agent that your company uses for making business trips and you can book your own travel with the same person. In case, your company uses centralized resources for booking travel, then you can provide the complete details of the trip to this individual which is a great way to ensure that all the travel plans will be booked accurately. Also, do not forget to provide your frequent flier and hotel club numbers as this will enable you to credit for the miles and nights as well.
4) Once your arrangements have been completed, you can ask for a copy of the arrangement from the centralized booking resource. Also, in case you are making the bookings all by yourself, then never forget to take the confirmation number of the flight, hotel room and the rental car.