With more and more companies expanding the reach of their market across the country and even the globe, the role of the business travel planner has become increasingly important. Assistants who need to plan fast-paced and “not a moment to spare” meeting agendas and travel itineraries for their traveling executives know that getting it right is a difficult feat. Novice and senior assistants alike struggle with the task of travel planning for busy leaders. It’s a universal hurdle to star achievement!
The first thing you need to do as an assistant is to become educated about what business travel really is so that you can develop empathy for your executive. For many business owners and team leaders, business travel is stressful, draining, and dreaded. Jet lag, back-to-back meetings, and little recovery time reveal the reality of the weary business traveler. Traveling for work demands that your leader be sharp when it counts. Sometimes that’s a very tall order. Constant business travel is, quite often, very taxing on a person. Business trips are typically high-pressure, high-stakes events. If they weren’t, your leader probably wouldn’t need to fly across the country. Developing a keen understanding of what life on the road is really like, even if you don’t travel much yourself, is an incredibly important skill to master in order to effectively plan your leader’s business trips.
Once you understand their plight, how do master business travel planning? As usual, the answer lies within you. You must understand that travel planning is a cognitive task. Travel websites may be able to produce refined lists from an immense amount of data, but they simply cannot consider every single vital element that you, a human being, can. You know your leader. You understand what they need. You can appreciate what they’re up against. Use that know-how when you plan their travel and allow that understanding to work for you.
Because I know exceptional travel planning for business leaders is an incredibly important task, I’ve created an in-depth guide to help you master the skill. Mastering Business Travel Planning: A Vital Resource for Assistants eBook represents the culmination of my decades of experience in both planning business trips and traveling extensively myself. Ready to become a travel planning pro? Click here learn more!
