“Join the Navy and See the World!”*
Perhaps one of the most famous recruitment phrases ever established in the United States.
And it’s not at all dissimilar form what a lot of budding consultants think they are going to do when either joining a services organization, or starting their own business.
I have been fortunate in that I have gotten to “see the world” as a professional services engineer – at least a little.
What the recruitment phrase fails to mention is that while you may “see” the world, you [probably] won’t get to do much while you’re “seeing” it. I’ve been to or through nearly 60 airports in the last several years. I “saw” the coast of Japan a few times when going into and out of Narita. I’ve “seen” Las Vegas – from a couplefew thousand feet. I’ve “seen” Houston – from IAD. And so on and so forth.
The far more realistic view of what will happen is something like this:
- get call Friday afternoon asking you to be onsite in <someplace> Monday morning
- book flight, hotel, rental car (if appropriate)
- make sure clothes are clean
- do as much Saturday and/or Sunday as you can, since you’ll be gone for a week
- fly out Sunday evening or Monday morning (I’ll talk about this later)
- get rental car
- check into hotel
- go to customer site
- work
- eat
- sleep
- repeat
- check out from hotel
- return car
- fly home
- repeat all of above
As someone who has been doing a travel-based job for 7+ years now, let me share some of the things I have learned with you.
Basics
Loyalty programs
Sign up for airline frequent flyer programs. In the US, this means Delta, United, Southwest, and American Airlines.
Sign up for hotel rewards. Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Wyndham.
Sign up for the car rental programs. Hertz, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Thrifty, Enterprise, National.
Stay “loyal”
So long as you are able, ie costs are reasonable, schedules are good, etc, stick with a single primary chain for each of the travel categories (airline, car, hotel). If you’re going to get status, might as well get it all with one place when possible.
Sign up for every promotion your loyalty partners make available. For example, I’m a United Guy (used to be a Delta Guy – but that’s a different story). I’m also a Hilton Guy (because Marriott hasn’t been as competitive (price, location) in the markets I’ve been to as they used to be). I have my Hilton HHonors Double Dip go to HHonors points and United miles. And I make sure ay time there is a promo to get more points or miles that I sign-up for it. If Hilton wants to give me an extra 5,000 United miles for every stay after the second between now and 31 August, why not take advantage of that?
Choose the best rewards – for you
Maybe you like traveling so much you want to have Avis points so you can get free car rentals on vacation. Personally, I find turning all my reward points into frequent flyer miles is my best option – renting a car for a week is almost always less expensive than paying for a flight – especially when my family goes somewhere on vacation.
Clothes
Every shirt and pair of pants I take when I go onsite are “no iron”. This saves time when you arrive. And you won’t have nearly as much time as you think you will, most of the time.
Get slip-on dress shoes. You will appreciate this most when going through airport security. But also if you have to go through security to get into customer buildings, etc.
Have an arrival and departure change of clothes that are comfortable – I like jeans and either a polo or comfortable t-shirt.
What about jackets? I like the lightest-weight jacket I can carry/wear: there will not be enough space on the plane for it, it’ll get hot in the airport, and you really only normally need it to walk from the airport to the rental car shuttle / counter, form the rental counter to the car, the car to the hotel, the hotel to the office, and all in reverse. You probably won’t need a parka for those types of activities.
Baggage
There’s a big conversation that surrounds this topic, but I’m going to tell you what works for me. First, check your main bag – it’ll accelerate your time to board, your time between flights (if you have one or more connections), and make it easier to get around the airport when you arrive (easier to use the bathroom, get a meal, etc). So save everyone headaches and check your main bag.
In your one carry-on – a laptop bag- you should have the following:
- single change of clothes
- snack & water bottle (empty, of course)
- basic minimal toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, etc)
- book (or {{Kindle}}, but I like a physical book – there’s never anything to have to turn off)
- all required chargers (laptop, cell phone, {{mifi}}, etc)
- portable battery backup like an {{EasyAcc Classic}}
Arriving and Departing
Day-of? Or night before?
This is almost entirely a personal preference: arriving day-of (eg Monday morning) can be good if you have a family, don’t mind getting up hyper early to get to the airport, and can functional well enough on little sleep.
Arriving night before (eg Sunday night) can be good because if you’re bumped or delayed on a flight, you have cushion before your customer expects to see you.
Either way, always try to check-into your hotel before going to your customer – if it’s an early-Monday arrival, change out of your travel clothes at the airport into work clothes, and have the hotel hold your bags for you.
I alternate between which is better for me to do based on how many connections I have, customer expectations (if you have a mandatory 0900 meeting Monday, and you flight won’t arrive til 0930, you have to come in Sunday night), time of year (weather considerations), etc.
What did I miss?
What would you add/change/tweak on this cheat sheet?
* I always though it should read, “Join the Navy and Sea the World”
A few things:
1. Always try to get the airline/hotel rewards credit card when you start the job. You’re not going to earn miles on actual flights. This is great if your card is expensible.
2. Sunday night flights are less crowded, but airports tend to be less efficient during these times. (You’re typically are going to get the “new recruits” and people that aren’t motivated to get the line to go through)
3. Sunday flights suck: There are less flights, often this is the best day to delay a flight. (Most people fly Monday morning). If you have to connect and your first flight is delayed, you’re likely to be screwed over by this. (The other option is putting more time on the connection, but that pretty much wipes out more than half of your day on Sunday).
4. Don’t connect in Laguardia. It’s stupid and that airport should have been torn down decades ago.
5. Live near a major hub of an airline. (Chicago, JFK, LGA, Denver, and Dallas are great for this).
6. Status is great, mostly for the priority access.
7. Forget physical books: its much easier to bring your kindle, and it’s lighter.
8. Even better than a kindle: A tablet with a long life battery, and a way to connect it to a USB stick. That way you can load it up with TV shows, and movies.
Obviously we disagree on the book-vs-kindle/tablet viewpoint 🙂
and as for the rewards credit cards, it’s vital to know two things before doing that:
(1) are expenses on personal cards reimbursable?
(2) how speedily does the company reimburse expense reports?
If they reimburse once a month, you need to have ~$10,000-12,000 in the bank ready to pay off the card every month so you’re never incurring interest
your (5) isn’t always possible (though there are benefits to being close to a big city) – often enough, the cost of living near such an airport makes any schedule improvement you might otherwise get not a good trade-off
Interest really isn’t “that bad.” If the company is truely terrible with expenses, expense them for the interest.
5. Is a quality of life issue. If you have to connect just to get to work. You’re bringing on a lot of risk and you’re loosing a lot of time. “The cost of living near such of an airport… not get a good trade off” Thats a cop out. The amount of time you save gives you more time to do other things. Otherwise you’re going to devalue your time and ultimate earnings per hour.
You cannot expense interest – sorry, but you can’t.
The cost of living near, say, JFK is double where I live in KY. It’s nowhere near worthwhile to move there just to save a little flying / connection time. Add-on the generally crappier wait times through security, etc, and living elsewhere often makes a lot of sense.