2. FEATURE: How to Add Vacations to Your Business Trips

Last issue we covered how to incorporate business in your travel, so this issue you are going to learn how to add vacations to your business trips.

Top Ten Reasons to Combine Business Travel with Vacation

1. You can double your vacation time
2. Your vacations can be partly or wholly tax deductible
3. Use the business travel budget to cover your transport costs (e.g. work flies you to Miami and back, so the cost of your vacation is really just accommodation for the extra days you stay)
4. Split up long period of stressful work with some R&R
5. Split up long period of R&R that can start to feel a little boring, with a little productivity (great for us workaholics)
6. Come back to the office happier, more grounded, and more productive
7. No more long periods out of touch with the office when people are unable to access you
8. Keeps you out of the office more so your assistants can prove they can handle more responsibility
9. Forces you to be more efficient when you’re only allowed to work for 2 hours a day
10. Allows you to get those BIG projects done with no distractions

When doing a business trip, how can you incorporate vacation?

• Get there early. The simplest and most obvious way is to get to the event a couple of days early and do some sightseeing before it’s time to do business. If you can justify it to the office as important to get grounded and happy before the meeting – especially if it’s an international flight – you might get work to pay for a day or two of the extra hotel cost.

Or – tack on a few days at the end of the project. If the client agrees to stay another day or two, that’s a BIG reason for your boss to fork out for the extra hotel expense.

Example: This month I fly to Australia so the government can audit my company. I’ll be setting speeches up in two towns, meeting with my accountant and production manager who live there, and spending time with my family.

• Stretched financially? Try www.couchsurfing.com for a place to crash once the business accommodation budget dries up. Youth Hostels might seem a bit unprofessional or like you’re coming down in the world, but that’s largely the point. You’ll meet colorful people you’ll never even see while insulated at the Hilton. Call way in advance and you might even secure the private room instead of a dorm.
• Use your network. Another way to defray the cost is to email every friend you know, asking if they have a friend in that town who might put you up for two nights. Then, you do such a good job of tidying up, doing the dishes, and cooking dinner for people that they’re asking you to stay longer.
• Work couldn’t survive without you? I hate to break it to your ego (especially if it’s as big as mine), but I suggest you write down what would happen if you were in hospital for two weeks unable to communicate. What would happen in your business? Who would pick up the reins? What could your assistant or secretary handle that you’ve never allowed room for?
• Stop ‘on the way’. Is work flying you close to a place you’d like to go? See if you can stop off on the way there (or the way back) for a couple of days, at no extra airfare cost to you.

Example: This year I flew to Vail Colorado for a retreat. I decided to fly “via” Calgary and spend a week with friends. The cost of the total trip was less (in time and money) than if I’d flown to Vail only on this trip, and then done a separate trip to Calgary.

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Action: Post on the blog:

1) How have you combined work and vacation successfully?

2) What is one idea you would like to incorporate to add vacation to your work?

3) Post your answers to the blog.

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