…There Is Nothing Glamorous About Business Travel
1. Business travel is physically, emotionally and mentally draining. The glamorous image of exotic locations, eating at the best restaurants and mingling with the glitterati is quickly dispelled when you take your first business trip. There are usually meetings stacked upon meetings, during each one you have to be on your game. And for every trip to London, New York or Hong Kong, there are a dozen more to Minnesota, Lexington or Winnipeg. Don’t believe me? Check out a week-in-the-life of an international jet-setter at Brip Blap.
2. The great fallacy of business travel to the uninformed is that you get to “see the world”. Yes, you do get to see the world, buy mostly through the window of a taxi. What you really get to experience are airports, offices, hotels and lots of bad coffee.
3. The whole process of travel leaves much to be desired. Even if you are lucky enough to travel business or first class, you still have to suffer through getting to the aiport, checking in, battling through security, waiting in an airport (which all start looking and feeling the same), enduring crappy movies on the flight, getting through immigration and getting to your final destination. It’s exactly like a vacation, but with no R&R at the end of the tunnel.
4. There are elements to business travel that can be fun and you can let yourself go, let loose outside of your usual haunts and do something different. However, there are limits, usually determined by with whom you are traveling. The best times are when you travel with a colleague of equal rank - you can relax a little more, particularly if you get along. When traveling with a boss or subordinate, you have to mind your manners a little more. You don’t want to appear foolish to your boss or perceived as a bad influence to those who look up to you.
5. No matter how hard you try, you feel like crap after a business trip. Your best efforts might get you to the hotel’s gym on the odd occasion, but a few days of meals out, drinking, hangovers, and too little sleep in too many strange beds takes it toll.
For a few tips on how to stay on top of your game, check out Travelfitness.com and The Mayo Clinic.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:26 am
It’s all there, you got it. I did it for 1.5 year and in the end the smell of the hotels were bothering me…
You end up saving lots of money, but your personal life doesn’t exist.
Cheers mate! Good one!
April 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
i think there is a good medium that can be reached — about 1 trip per 2 month (w/ 1 trip = about 3-4 days). more than that and you run into the problems outlined above.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
foxnomad - I think you’re right. Too much and it turns into a grind. The occasional trip can be refreshing if approached in the right way. Kind of like a mini-vacation!