You stayed late at work the night before. The morning alarm is ringing through the fifth snooze and you’re already half an hour behind schedule. You’ve got more than enough time for a shower but you’ve not prepared the clothes you’re going to wear and your suitcase is only half-packed. The kettle remains stone cold, you grab the last bruised banana and head out of the door quicker than you woke up. The self-service ticket machine at the train station freezes every time you hit the Z key. Where’s the train? Your flight is at 10.00 and it’s already 8.00. There’s a tube strike and the train crawls all the way to the airport. Your check-in queue snakes around Terminal 1 like a reticulated python. You’ve made your flight by 10 minutes through grub, sweat and fear.
Experienced business travellers become seasoned in the frequency of travel through the unique art of trial and error. There are, however, intrinsic factors that travellers can’t expect or fully bring into their control. Factors such as anxiety and stress (flying or work related), bad nutrition, lack of physical activity and sleep can take a simple journey and turn it into a complex orienteering mission of the body and soul. Trying to catch up with food and sleep on the plane is possible but the reality is that it’s not the easiest environment to do it in. Extrinsic factors such as flight time, lighting, altitude, temperature and noise can affect even the most comfortable of business travellers.
Life isn’t always simple. Every person has their own way of countering and dealing with the stress of business travel. The key to a more relaxing journey is to make sure the things you can control are in place and this may just set the tone for the rest of your odyssey. Accommodation is one thing you shouldn’t have to worry about with serviced apartments multiplying across the globe as we speak. Make sure the place you’re travelling to is as comfortable as the place you’ve left.
