By Trust Travel
Planning a work-related trip can be a stressful endeavor. On top of your usual travel concerns, you also have to keep your mind focused on the business aspect of your trip. Business travel doesn’t have to be stressful, though. With a little planning and preparation, you can help ensure your trip runs as smoothly as possible so you can stay focused on your work.
1. Find out if you’ll need any special accommodations
Depending on where you’re traveling to, you may need to make certain accommodations for yourself. This is usually more important for international travel, but it may be relevant for domestic travel as well
- If you’re traveling internationally, you may need to secure a visa before you leave. You may also need certain vaccinations, including anti-malarial medication.
- If traveling to a city at an elevation above 4,900 feet (1,500 meters), you may be susceptible to elevation sickness. Try to give yourself a few days to acclimate before doing anything strenuous and start drinking two to three liters of water each day to stay hydrated.
- If you’re traveling outside the country, find out if you can safely drink the tap water where you’ll be. If not, you’ll need to stick to bottled, purified water to stay healthy.
2. Put together an itinerary
Having an itinerary is the easiest way to ensure that you remain on schedule and don’t forget any important tasks on your trip. Knowing where to go and what to do, as well as what time everything needs to happen by, will help streamline your travel plans from start to finish.
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3. Make reservations for hotels, flights, and anything else that requires booking
Look online to find the best deals on flights and hotels. Some websites, such as Expedia, will allow you to book flights, hotels, and rental cars all in the same place.
- While air flight booking, make sure that you use your sky miles account so that you can get points and rewards. You might even have enough sky miles already to cover the cost of your flight!
- When booking your hotel, see if you can use sky miles or get points towards a rewards program. You should also make note of your hotel’s policies on check-in, check-out, parking, and a number of people per room.
- If you need a rental car, make sure that all the roads you’ll be driving will be safe with your rental car. Research if you need a two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. Look around with different rental car companies to see which has the best rate.
- Some credit cards also have rewards plans and perks for traveling. See if your credit card comes with any of these benefits.
3.Check that your ID/passport is up-to-date
You may not need a passport if you’re traveling domestically for business, but you will need one for international flights. Even on domestic flights, you’ll need a valid, state-issued ID. Failure to have the proper identification can delay or even prevent your trip altogether.
- Make sure that all your identification is valid and up-to-date well in advance, as it can take several weeks for new documents to be prepared.
4. Back up all your important information
Thanks to current technology, most of us rely pretty heavily on our smartphones and digital devices. However, depending on where you are traveling, you may not have phone or internet reception readily available. If you’re relying on your digital devices for your itinerary, plane ticket, presentation, or paperwork, you may be out of luck if you’re in a dead zone.
- Keep a backup copy of all your important information on your laptop or a USB flash drive.
- If you really want to cover all your bases, you can also print out hard copies of any important paperwork and keep those papers in a file with your travel documents.
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