If you regularly travel for work, does it feel like a grand opportunity to enjoy new experiences or an endless burden of delayed flights, long hours, and generic hotel rooms? Some argue that how you answer likely has to do with your generation – with Gen Xers and millennials inherently embracing business travel much more than their older counterparts. While that might be true to some degree, I think whether you regard business travel as a perk or burden has more to do with other factors.
Business travel and life stage
The younger you are, the easier it is to travel frequently for work. You’re less likely to be in a serious relationship, have kids, or aging parents who need assistance. You have probably not travelled extensively, so the allure of seeing new places is stronger. You’re not earning as much, so the opportunity to tack on a few days of leisure to your business gig is appealing because you can save on flight costs.
The older and more complicated adult commitments become, the harder it is to incorporate the regular absences from your home base. I bet that parents with young children, regardless of the generation, find business travel more of a burden than a perk.
Also, much like the body’s ability to bounce back after a night on the town when you’re young, business travel becomes physically harder the older we get. The late nights and jet lag that are the hallmarks of business trips take a toll that’s easier at the start of our careers.
Where business travel takes you
This might reveal my bias, but driving to far-flung small towns on business is less desirable than monthly trips to London, New York City, or Vancouver, for example.
My spouse Steve generally loves business travel. However, at one point in his career, he did a multi-week commute from our home in Winnipeg to a small, isolated city in the U.S. Outside of work hours there was virtually nothing to do, and even though he came home on weekends, his flights were routinely delayed, and he missed connections. Steve was not loving business travel during that time.
How your employer treats business travel
Companies that understand the value travelling employees provide treat them accordingly. Business travel is only a perk if you get the right support and conditions that make it so. That means above-average expense allowances for meals and hotels and an upgrade to business class flights for long-haul trips if required to work as soon as you hit the ground. It means encouraging spouses or other loved ones to join on a trip (at their own expense) because that makes frequent travel less stressful. Finally, if employers are expecting travelling workers to keep up with all of their regular work in addition to the business that takes them out of town, burn out is sure to follow.
Attitude
As much as it is hard for me to imagine, some people don’t enjoy travelling. They like the routine and comforts of home and seek to avoid the stress of the unfamiliar that comes with business travel. I agree that today’s younger generation has a more global mindset and desire to see the world, but you still need a particular personality to think of business travel as a perk.
Business travel is both a perk and a burden
I did a scrupulously scientific survey of my business travelling Instagram and Twitter followers to find out what they thought. About a hundred responded on Instagram with 86 percent saying it was a perk and 14 percent saying it was a burden.
I think twitter follower and Netherlands-based consultant and trainer, Jesse Houwing, summed it up best: “ Business travel is both a perk and burden depending on the context. “It depends on the people I’m with, the work, how much me time I’ll have, and my energy level,” he says, adding if he’s flying in to do a training session and out immediately after, it’s more of a burden.
What’s your experience with business travel?
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