Stephen M is 32 years old. But his near-constant travel and its accompanying irritants have made him wiser than his years. He always makes sure that the hotel he stays at has high speed Internet connectivity in the room. After all, all he requires is be able to connect his laptop and have Internet access 24 hours without needing to dial up. This way, he can keep in touch with his office. However, he realises that many of the top hotels in the world do not have this facility and instead have a dial up (for which one needs a local AOL account) or Internet on TV (for which you cannot download documents onto your laptop).
This is one of the many things business travellers need to look at before they plan their itinerary. You might be great career-wise, but corporate travel is a different ballgame. And this is something you learn on the job. So here are a few tips to cut that learning curve, so you can concentrate on your business and leave the trivialities to take care of themselves.
Happy travelling!
- Look for hotels that have power connections which are multi-country – any power socket should be able to fit in. But sadly, not all international hotel chains have this facility. Ofcourse, a way around this problem is to carry an adapter for your cell phone and laptop.
- Look around for different hotels on the Net, including their features through sites like indianholiday.com, makemytrip.com, indiaprofile.com, travelport.com, cleartrip.com, expedia.com and travelocity, and book exactly what you want.
- Business travellers are in a permanent state of jet lag and wouldn’t even recognise it because they are always in different time zones. And the solution? To sleep as soon as the main meal is served, depending on the timing of the flight and then to sleep through everything else… other meals and movies. For help with adjusting to the new time zone, you can sometimes use 1 mg Melatonin. Melatonin acts on the brain in response to darkness, so some travellers find it helpful in resetting their biological time clocks. Ofcourse a partial solution to beat jet lag is to stay awake till bedtime on the first day no matter what time you arrive. Sleep through the night for about 10 hours and after that, jet lag becomes easier to handle.
- Since most hotels have an in-house spa, make the most of their head and shoulder massages. What’s more, some hotels offer to make the room completely dark and provide DND if desired. They also provide a soft eye massage if that helps. Our advice: even if the hotels don’t offer such a service, you can request for it beforehand.
- If your passport has been stolen or you’ve misplaced your air tickets, alert the hotel. Be prepared to answer questions on your movement in and out of the hotel. If they are good, they will alert the security and have a thorough search done in all the areas frequented by you. They could also help you file a police complaint and assist you in arranging for a duplicate passport through their respective embassies or a duplicate airline ticket through the respective airlines or travel agency.
- If it’s lost luggage, help is at hand. Which means, if the luggage took its time to come at the airport, just alert the airline and go home. If the airline’s good, it should be delivered to the place where you stay within 12 hours. If the delay is more than 12 hours, the airline or its insurance agency compensates for it, too.
- One of the most common problems that most travellers face is waiting between flights and dehydration. So carry a bottle of mineral water and a good book at all times.
- Before you board any flight, email a photo-copy of the passport, ticket and the credit card to yourself so you can access it anywhere, anytime just in case of a crisis.
- If you find your checked-in luggage is damaged in transit or on arrival, complain to the airlines. They are insured to compensate you and obligated to do so.
- If you are travelling to Europe on a coach tour, it would be ideal to carry two pieces of medium-sized luggage rather than one large. Not to mention, pickles. They are not to be carried in your hand baggage as they are considered a deadly weapon.
- The best way to beat all travel-related problems, including food and language, is planning your trip well in advance. But even before that, connect with people in the country you are visiting so you know what to expect when you land there. It could even be the weather, the best places to go to whether it’s hotels, restaurants or shopping hotspots. All your trips become enjoyable when the people living there give you insights that you might not know on your own. And it helps in networking, too. If you know some XYZ, through him, you can get to know someone who is related to your kind of business.
- And sometimes, it’s best to do a recce of the hotel before you check in. And this can be done remotely. The next time you book a hotel, ensure that all the essentials are provided for well before you check into the hotel in a different city in a different country. For example: you could insist on a clean room that’s totally noise-free or insist on a hotel that has wi-fi connectivity so business can be conducted on the laptop even while drying yourself by the pool.
- Go for hotels that provide for 24-hour check-in and check-out. What’s more, rent hotel rooms only for the day, if you have to return the same day. Due to shortage of rooms in cities like Bangalore, corporate travellers are forced to make day trips and return the same day. However, they are forced to pay the normal hotel rates even for a stay less than 12 hours. But a few budget hotels have special rates just for the day. You can avail of this facility between 8am and 6pm.
- Go for hotels where you can check-in by just sending an email or SMS and check out of the hotel with your credit card. Convenience should define your corporate travel. Not the other way around.