Business Owners: Five Surprising Changes That Affect Business Travel
In 2003, I took my business on the road for three months while traveling by car around much of North America. In 2007, I took almost as long for a road trip from Massachusetts to Alaska and back. In those four years, several things changed that significantly affected some practicalities of taking care of business when away from the office and ones home base for that long a time. If youre planning extensive business travel and havent been on the road in a couple of years, some of these changes might come as a surprise to you, too.
1. Internet access. In 2003, high-speed Internet was a specialty item in the hospitality industry, restricted to a few name-brand hotel and coffee-shop chains. Before I left on my 2007 trip, several people told me blithely, Wi-fi is everywhere now. Im glad I looked skeptically at that assessment.
During ten weeks of travel in Canada and the U.S., only one-third of the time did wi-fi work conveniently and right away in the room where we were staying. Another third of the time we were able to use wi-fi after quite a bit of technical fiddling or by going to...