10 Travel Tips to Make Business Travel Tolerable
Posted April 23, 2019
This is a short blog, but hopefully an educational one. I spend quite a bit of time on the road, and have for the last 15 years. With a wife and two young kids at home, this can sometimes be a tough gig. However, here are five bits of advice to help you keep your sanity and make business travel as enjoyable as possible.
1. Take a picture of everything. Where you parked your car at the airport. Your baggage claim stubs. Your hotel door. Your rental car. Everything. When you travel as much as I do, you often find yourself forgetting your room number or what your rental car looks like in the morning. I take a picture of everything and it’s saved me from wandering around aimlessly looking for things.
2. Check into your hotel as late as possible. It took me about 10 years of business travel to understand why I found it so depressing. I love my job and the work, but hotels are soul crushers. They amplify missing your wife, kids, etc. They also are terrible places to work. Business travel became more enjoyable for me when I stopped working from my hotel room. If I need to work, I’ll go to a coffee shop. Being around people, sunlight and characters are key to keeping sane.
3. Work out. It’s inevitable that you’re going to eat terribly on the road, and this is coming from someone who is a religiously healthy eater. The combination of travel stresses and parental guilt stresses means I’m opting for the French fries and extra beer. If I exercise daily on the road, I’m at least breaking even and feel a little healthier.
4. Bring a book. Eating dinner alone can sometimes be, well, lonely. Phones don’t help and actually I find they make it worse. However, a book and a well-crafted Manhattan is the perfect dinner date on the road. Keeps you occupied and not staring into a screen.
5. Come prepared. If you don’t do your research on things to occupy your free time in a new city, you’ll be stuck eating hotel room service or at a Panera after wandering around aimlessly. I’m a foodie, so before each trip, I research the best restaurants in the city and then check the city’s calendar to see if there is anything going on. I’m not an avid theatre fan, but I’ve been to a couple productions on the road and I’ve found them to be some of my most enjoyable trips.
CATEGORY: Brightly Creative, Work
