Travel and Business don’t mix. If you’ve been traveling for a while, you’ll agree with this statement. The hours, the inconvenient seats, bland food, and the constant frisking at security checkpoints, these things are just insufferable. Yet, what we realized is that if you travel smart, your business trips will be a breeze. It’s not that the two things don’t mix, it’s that we don’t know how to combine them. So, how do you do that?
1- Get a Proper Carry-On Bag
From the check-in desk at your home city to the baggage claim belt at your destination country, your luggage goes through a lot of throwing, flipping, rolling, squishing, and pushing. Can you imagine what happens to the clothes inside? When traveling for business, it’s better to use carry-on garment bags to avoid putting your formal clothes through such a catastrophe. That way, you’ll be able to show up to business meetings with decent looking shirts and suits, and in case your luggage gets lost, you’d at least have extra clothes to help you survive.
2- Don’t Go Out Without a Portable Charger
Imagine one of your electronic devices suddenly dying on you, with no power sockets in sight. When traveling for business, it’s not a matter of getting bored on your flight. It’s a matter of not being able to contact your home office, your foreign contacts, or even up to using your tablet to get some work done. That’s why you should make sure that you pack a portable charger in case you need to perform an emergency resuscitation. It’s either that or compromising your entire trip schedule.
3- B.Y.O.H
Have you ever tried connecting to public Wi-Fi networks inside an airport? There’s always something wrong. Some require a complicated sign-up procedure, some are timed, some connections are of poor quality, and some networks don’t even let you connect. To save yourself the trouble, bring your own portable hotspot. Nowadays, with any number of devices, you could get a mobile hotspot and access the internet no matter where you are.
4- Use an Expense Management App
On business trips, our minds are usually too preoccupied with work that it gets hard to keep track of the petty expenses like meals and gas. That’s when travel apps come in handy. That way, you can just scan receipts or enter your expenses manually, just like a calorie counter but for money. After all, business is about delegation so, delegate expense management to specialized apps.
So, did you change your mind about the relationship between business and travel? Remember, it’s all about smart planning, smart investing, and keeping an eye out for the little things. It’s often that when we think of making traveling on business trips easier, we only consider big solutions like, staying in air lounges and flying first-class. While what you truly need to do is look at the little changes you can do. At the end of the day, it’s the simplest of applications and gadgets that make the biggest difference.