Business Travel Tips For Busy Professionals

Whether you’re an online marketing professional, or any other business professional for that matter, it’s likely you will need to travel for your career. You may need to travel to meet with clients. You may travel to attend conferences. You may travel to local offices around the world, if you work at a larger company. There are many different use cases when it comes to business travel and today I wanted to share a quick list of tips I have learned first hand.

1. Make sure to get plenty of rest. As digital marketing professionals, we tend to work long hours and get little sleep. This can work when you’re working from your home base, but is not going to cut it when travel enters the picture. Get too little sleep and you may feel extra bad during your flights and meetings. You will not be on your “A” game without proper rest.
2. Make sure to eat healthy and hydrate. This ties into the last tip. If you eat fast food at airports, you will not perform at your best. Combine bad food and lack of hydration with flying, and you may feel ill.
3. Try to avoid small planes if you get motion sickness. When booking flights, you can see the plane’s layout. Make sure to pick planes that are larger. I recently took a United flight that was really small, two seats on one side and one on the other. If small planes are not your cup of tea, make sure to plan ahead.
4. Try to accumulate points. Find the airlines you like the most, enroll in their frequent flyer programs. If you enroll in the United credit card, as one example, you always get to board in “group 2”. This is especially helpful if you are trying to avoid checking bags (next tip). Airlines want to reward you – make sure to take advantage of the rewards programs.
5. Carry all of your luggage on the plane. Checking bags can be quit slow. If you are trying to make connections and are busy with business meetings, it’s essential to optimize your time. Make sure to avoid checking luggage and pack smart!
6. Go all out on your home court. If there are events/meetings in your local area, take advantage of those opportunities.
7. Keep careful track of all your receipts. There are so many miscellaneous expenses when you’re traveling. With good records, you will be able to file accurate expense reports after your trip.
8. Divide and conquer! Digital marketing and business in general is a team sport. One person can’t do all the traveling. Divide and conquer by sharing the travel/conferences with your colleagues.
9. Set an out of office assistant in Outlook, if you will not be responding to emails. Point people to someone on your team (or a colleague) who can cover for you. While you are traveling, business needs to continue as normal.
10. Have fun and try to speak at events. Travel and conferences provide a great way to practice your speaking skills. Moreover, they offer an amazing networking opportunity.

Do you like business travel? What travel tips do you utilize? (Related post: You may want to check out my post from a few years ago about how PPC Jobs Are Great For Travel.)