Business travel is all about maximizing efficiency and avoiding long periods of doing nothing. Taking that into consideration, what are some of the biggest time wasters when traveling for business? Regardless of whether you’re venturing out to a convention or have a meeting with overseas clients, the following concerns always rear their heads and threaten to knock you off-schedule.
Empty Hours Due To Check-In Times
It’s hard to plan a business trip around flights and hotel check-ins because you’re not left with many options. What typically happens is you arrive at your destination way before your hotel lets you check in. Normally, you plan any meetings or activities for after the check-in time, as this lets you dump your luggage and look more presentable.
However, you’re left with these empty hours where you could do something, but you can’t drag your bags around with you. It’s sub-optimal, but luggage storage helps you destroy empty hours and be more productive on a business trip. Plan meetings or events during these periods and use local luggage storage solutions to put your bags away. Instead of sitting around waiting for your hotel to let you in, you can get some meetings done, attend a trade fair, etc.
Bad Public Transport Services
You’re used to using a fairly fast and reliable public transport service in your home city. It’s how you get to and from work, or how you visit suppliers and clients. As a consequence, you visit a new city for a business trip and assume the public transport is the same.
It probably won’t be.
Bad public transport services will be a hidden time waster, often causing delays during your trip. This can mean you leave a terrible first impression by turning up half an hour late to meet an important international client. Or, you’re late for your guest appearance at a business conference. Don’t let public transport get in your way – either rent an executive vehicle or pay for private cars to take you everywhere. You’ll chalk them up as business expenses anyway, so the extra costs don’t matter.
Jet Lag
Short and simple: jet lag causes some major time concerns during a business trip. The main problem is that you become too jetlagged to do anything, which may prevent you from attending meetings or mean you’re not focused enough on the task at hand.
How do you avoid jet lag? Prepare as well as you can beforehand if you’re jumping right into action on the first day. Alternatively, simply add an extra day or two to your schedule. Assign the first two days as recovery days, so you can jump into action on the third day without jet lag getting in the way of your actual schedule.
Each hidden time waster causes problems on its own, but the issues pile up when all three act at the same time. It turns a successful business trip into an utter disaster. Plan for these inconveniences and make sure they don’t ruin the goals you have for this trip.
Photo: Andrea Natali via Unsplash.
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