Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Business Travel On Short Notice

In any travel situation, the further in advance you can plan your trip, the better you will do on all of your accommodations. But in the world of business, it often occurs that you have to get to a destination immediately and the ability to move swiftly is critical to the success of the business goal. The good news is that you can do some preparations well in advance for short notice business trips so you are not caught completely without a plan.

You don't want to have to flounder around about how to book a flight and where to stay if the business journey looms suddenly and immediately. Short notice business trips seem to be endemic of certain industries and job descriptions so if you know you will go through this drill often, you can make some arrangements far in advance so you have a checklist of just what to do when you find out that you must be at your destination virtually immediately.

First of all, in a short notice travel situation, economy takes a second priority. Your employer knows that if you have to book full fare on an airline to get to your destination at a specific time, the higher expense is unavoidable. Make sure that your company travel policy has some clauses to put aside travel budget limits in such a scenario.

The part of the trip where you will have the least "wiggle room" will be airline accommodations. Of course, you can use the big internet search tools like Travelocity or Orbitz. In general, those are good places to start to find what airlines do have flights at your specified times. But once you pick an airline, working through the airline's web site directly will show you the most options they can offer and sometimes provide you with better fares, even on short notice. Be sure you watch the travel details closely so you don't find yourself enduring long layovers that are going to jeopardize the tight timetable of the business meetings you need to attend. If necessary, spend the money on nonstop flights to assure that the business goal of the trip is top priority.

Do your homework about hotel accommodations well in advance. If there are likely destinations that you could be called upon to go to quickly, you can do your research on the closest hotels to the business site so you cut down on commutes once you are there. By having your target hotels bookmarked and the phone numbers on file, you can quickly call and set up your accommodations in a matter of minutes. But if you find that your best choices for hotels are booked up on the days you will be at your site, call them anyway. A good hotel will call around to other hotels in the area and get you a room as close to your destination as possible. They can save you hours of frustration searching for a replacement room.

Rental cars are usually not as much of a problem. It's a good idea to call ahead and get a reservation but short of a major convention or sporting event in town, there are so many rental car agencies that you should be able to find a car to rent even if you don't start your search until you are on the ground at your destination city.

You can make other preparations for the possibility of a short notice business trip like having your toiletries and personal affects you always travel with packed and ready to walk out the door. By having your travel clothes ready to go, you can virtually walk home and walk out in a matter of minutes for a short notice business trip because you are that well prepared.

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Battling Travel Anxiety

The classic anxiety story about travel involves being on the road for a while only to suddenly remember that you forgot to turn off the oven. While that is a domestic story, there is just as much or more anxiety that can go into getting on the road for a business purpose as there is for private travel. The details that must be taken care of to put a business trip on the road can be overwhelming.

It is easy to develop an anxiety complex when going on a business trip and get to where you are in a constant state of stress and worry that you have forgotten something or that there is an important detail that was left undone before you left. This stress anxiety can be destructive to your business goals for the trip. So you need some basic concepts that you can go back to just before the business trips gets underway and as you get on the road so you have some ammunition to combat travel anxiety en route.

* Call in the troops. One big way to stop travel anxiety in its tracks is to utilize your business partners to help you prepare for the trip. It is likely that a number of people in your chain of command or in your department have a vested interest in seeing the trip you are setting out to accomplish is a success. Use their help to plan the trip and to develop detailed check lists of what has to happen before you leave and what has to go with you. Then on the day before you depart, meet with those associates and review those lists. As you check off each thing, insist that your associate initial the list to validate that the detail was taken care of. Then take the list with you. By consulting it often, you can calm yourself that you did take care of all the details along the way.

* Did you forget your head? Ok so you have a good system in to make sure all of your business needs are covered, the next level of anxiety comes when you are sitting on the airplane and you wonder if you packed everything you need for travel personally. There are a couple of antidotes to this type of travel anxiety. First of all, use a similar check list system to assure you have what you need on the flight. You can develop a travel check list that you maintain and update from business trip to business trip. As you use that list each trip, you will discover any missing items or things to do and update the list. And by checking each need off as you take care of it before you travel, you can calm that nervous system of yours that you have done everything so its time to relax.

* What do you really need after all? Second of all, if that check list system has dozens of items and issues on it, much of that can be eliminated by that simple question. The truth is there is very little you really need that you cannot get there if you forgot something at home. You must have your airline tickets, your driver's license and credit card and any special medication that cannot be found at your destination. If you have plenty of credit, there really is little else you cannot buy at your destination point if you forgot something or other. Comfort yourself that the trip won't grind to a halt if you forgot something.

* But what if? That question literally can drive you insane. If you let yourself start thinking about whether the plane will crash or if your dog dies while you are away or the hundred of other "what ifs" that might happen, you will turn into a ball of anxiety before the first flight is done. So the answer to "but what if?" is 'that has not happened so far and the odds it will happen this time are remote." Use some logic and adult thinking to combat emotional urge to worry.

The urge to worry is natural in all of us. Its part of your urgent desire to do well on the road. But make one of the things on that check list of things that must happen for this business trip to be a success just one word which is "RELAX".

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