Everyone has a business travel horror story. One time a hotel receptionist said I was trying to check in a full day before my reservation and that they didn’t have a room for me that night (I wound up bunking with a very generous coworker who had an extra bed). A former colleague got stuck in Russia for about a week once due to some inexplicable mix-up relating to airplane manifests and visas (or his lack of offering a bribe, perhaps). Recently, a friend of mine wasn’t told that a 9 a.m. meeting involved taking a 7 a.m. boat to the location and she arrived two hours late.
Business travel can and does go wrong, though you reduce your chances of hiccups the more you prepare. And if you haven’t traveled for work in a while, you might not remember everything to it, down to the right way to pack your bags! Here are some tips and reminders to review before your next business trip.
1. Confirm All Your Reservations
Have I shown up to an airport only to find that a ticket I thought had been booked by a travel agent or sponsor had merely been reserved? And never paid for? And then I had to turn around and get in a taxi and head home instead of going on my business trip? Uh, yes.
Always confirm your reservation at least 48 hours before you travel. “Confirm” means go the extra step to make sure everything is verified. For airline tickets, look up the booking reference number alongside your name online to make sure your ticket has been purchased, not just reserved. For hotel reservations, call the hotel directly and double check the dates and address; if you need special accommodations, like an accessible room or a refrigerator for medication, confirm those details, too. Do the same for car rental reservations, train tickets, and other modes of travel. It’s much easier to fix problems two days in advance than on the spot.
2. Don’t Settle for Less Than a 3-Hour Layover
As I was working on this article, I asked coworkers to share their business travel horror stories. A surprising number of them involved “the airport dash,” that breathless run through a crowded terminal that anyone who has seen Home Alone can picture vividly.
When booking business travel, don’t settle for a layover shorter than three hours, regardless of whether you or someone else (like a travel agent) is making the itinerary. The advice was different a few years ago, but now with 11% more flights being canceled and delayed(Opens in a new window) compared with pre-pandemic times, three hours is the minimum.
When you first get your itinerary for a business trip, check the layover times closely and if you’re being asked to make a connection with insufficient time, do not approve the ticket. Ask for a new itinerary instead. And when arriving at an airport, show up two hours early if the airport is familiar to you and plan for three hours if it’s not.
3. Renew Your IDs
If you haven’t traveled much in the last few years, check the expiration date of your passport and other IDs well in advance of booking air travel or any international travel. Leave yourself plenty of time for renewing those personal documents, as some agencies are still behind on their processing times after being short-staffed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For passports, it’s always advisable, no matter what kind of trip you’re taking, to leave a trusted person with a a black and white photocopy of your ID page. You can save a digital copy for yourself as well, as long as you put it somewhere secure. For example, storing a copy on a cloud service that uses encryption is all right, and making it password-protected is better. In the event your passport is lost or stolen, you can get the details of that page, which will help the nearest embassy or consulate cancel the old one and issue you a new emergency passport faster.
4. Check With Your IT Team for Requirements
What do you require to connect to all the servers and systems you use for work while traveling? If you haven’t traveled in a while, there’s a chance your organization’s IT team has beefed up its policies. Do you need a special VPN connection? Will your machine kick itself off any Wi-Fi that it determines is not secure? Check in with your IT team before you travel. It also doesn’t hurt to ask for the phone number of someone who can help you if you get locked out of email, Slack, or whatever other communication tools your team uses.
5. Carry Small Bills for Tips
Did you know that you should tip the cleaning staff when you check out of a hotel? I meet people all the time who have never learned this tipping rule. While tipping isn’t a worldwide custom, in the US and Canada at the very least you really should tip the hotel staff a few dollars for every day of your stay. In other countries, it may not be expected but it’s always appreciated. Simply leave some cash in the room when you check out. If there’s stationary, write on a slip of paper, “Thank you!” The staff know what it’s for.
You may also need cash for tipping the bellhop of a hotel if you need to check your luggage. Or what if you show up to a business meeting by car where the parking is valet only? If you don’t usually carry cash, you should swing by an ATM that dispenses small bills on request or drop by your local bank branch to pick up some singles and fives.
(Credit: Jill Duffy)
6. Label Your Chargers and Devices
If you’re attending a conference or a large business meeting, there’s a good chance a lot of people will have the exact same chargers and cables as you. So label yours. No one ever regrets owning a label maker. Make some labels with your name and tag your chargers, USB bricks, and anything else you don’t want to lose.
7. Save Files and Important Information Offline
Many people know that when they’re traveling, they can save Google Docs offline and download web pages and articles to read later. For business trips, you should also keep offline copies of your itinerary and schedule. It’s really helpful to be able to pull up a confirmation number or the address of your next meeting on your phone or laptop quickly and without necessarily needing Wi-Fi or a data connection. There are some good travel apps, like TripIt and TripCase, that can collate your full travel itinerary and schedule for you, although throwing the details into a Word doc or note-taking app is totally fine if you prefer.
Sometimes when I have a few minutes to spare, like while waiting to board a flight, I’ll open important information and take screenshots on my phone. That way the information is saved in my photos and I can open it as long as my phone is charged.
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8. Collect Receipts
I have been searching my whole adult life for a smart and effective way to remember to always get a receipt while on a business trip. I’m good about digitizing receipts once I collect them because I’ve long had a process for using scanning apps and being paperless. The hard part is remembering to ask for a receipt at the time of purchase. I’ve tried different tactics, like keeping a small envelope for receipts next to my wallet so that when I reach into my handbag I see the envelope and it triggers my memory to say, “Can I have a receipt, please?” But that’s ineffective now that contactless payment via phone is fairly common. If you do use your phone for payments, you can at least print the record of a transaction stored in your phone’s wallet. It’s not a proper receipt, but it’s a close second.
(Credit: PCMag)
Most organizations will let you file an expense report even if you don’t have a receipt for every single travel expense, provided the expense is under a certain dollar amount. It’s always ideal to have a receipt, but if you are missing one or two of them, just ask if you can submit the expenses without them.
(Credit: Anker)
9. Pack a Backup Battery
In this era of conveniences, it stinks to be inconvenienced by a delayed flight, stalled train, stuck elevator, and what have you. Having a backup battery on hand, also known as a portable charger or power bank, lets you revive a depleted device. Make sure you bring a battery with a port that matches the charging cables you have, whether USB or USB-C. That way, you never have to go a moment without a powered up watch, phone, eReader, tablet, wireless earphones, or anything else that requires a charge.
10. For Highly Important or Stressful Trips: Print Key Info on Paper
What would you do if you were away from home and your devices crashed or were stolen? Or there was a blackout that disconnected you for a full day or more? Would you know where you were, what to do, who to call, or how to get home? If you’re ultra cautious, you’d have key information saved on paper for just such an event, in addition to your digital copies.
Most people think it’s overkill to print addresses, phone numbers, flight itineraries, and so forth for every trip, but you might do it for the most important ones or the most stressful ones. For example, I’ve moved overseas a few times for my partner’s job, which counts as business travel. And we have pets. When we move, it’s worth it to me to make sure I have every bit of paperwork saved in triplicate. Try entering a foreign country with live animals without it. There are times when you don’t want to leave anything to chance, and that’s when you should have printed copies of key information.
Improve Your Work Life
For more work-related advice, see our 20 tips for working from home and guidance on how to create better work-life balance.
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