How To Escape The Marriott Archipelago – Making Business Travel Tolerable.
By: Dappered Tech Correspondent Paul Olson, who on occasion travels for business, and has never been accused of failing to make the most of a situation. Read his other work for Dappered here. Top photo credit.
“How was the trip?” my wife asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“What’d you do?” she prodded, forgetting how boring business travel can be.
“Well, I got off the plane, took a cab to the Marriott, checked in, went to the meeting across the street, had dinner in the Marriott and flew out in the morning.”
“What did you think of the city?” she asked in disbelief.
“Well, the conference room was a little small, but the Marriott was nice.”
Business travel is all about standardization. Standardization of food, drink, and lodging. It’s dead-boring if you spend your trips eating burgers at Applebee’s, drinking Budweiser at the hotel bar, and sleeping in your sanitized room. I call it visiting the Marriott Archipelago – you can easily travel the world and never see anything outside the corporate pockets of business uniformity. If you do it wrong, it can be just terrible. Luckily, it’s easy to do it right. You just have to understand the island and know how to escape it.
Pack Light to Pack Right
Your goal is a computer bag and a carry-on (like this great duffel bag). That’s it. Bring as little as necessary, because the airport is part of the island and you don’t want to spend extra time there. Going to go for a run in the morning? Wear your sneakers on the plane. Better yet – switch to swimming. Swimming means less to bring (just a swimsuit) and no funky workout clothing in your bag. If you’re honestly not going to exercise while away, don’t fool yourself, and skip packing the workout clothes. At the end of every trip, look at what you didn’t wear – next time don’t bring anything you didn’t bring home dirty.
You don’t need to be prepared for every contingency. This is business travel, not boy scouts. If you truly need something that you failed to anticipate, buy it while on the road.
Lastly, don’t over-do the casual clothes. If you’re going to be in a suit all day, what’s another couple hours during dinner? Enjoy the formality. Embrace your business attire – you look good in it if you read this site. Casual attire is extra weight and overhead – limit it.
BYO Convenience
One of the first orders of business after arriving in a new city is finding a convenience store. Buy a couple bottles of water, a few breakfast bars, and maybe a small bottle of bourbon. Whiskey is the only drink that works in a hotel room – there will be whiskey-appropriate glasses in your room, ice down the hall, and whiskey doesn’t need a mixer. Again, minimalism wins. Makers Mark, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels – grab a small bottle. You may not get through it, but you’ll be glad it’s there. Without whiskey, nothing in your hotel room is yours outside your suitcase – the pictures on the walls, the furniture – not yours. With whiskey, your room has your drink.
With water, a colleague once referred to the Fiji water in his room as “the water of last resort.” The current price for the in-room delivery was $6, nearly a $5 premium over the convenience store price. You’re going to need more than just one bottle, and I draw the line of wasteful business travel spending on this side of the water-line. Don’t drink the Fiji … unless it’s your last resort.
Tech Matters
Being in a different city means being cut off from your normal communication venues. You don’t have your phone lines, your home WiFi, your office broadband. You need a smartphone if you want to stay connected to your home life. Get the LG Optimus V or the Samsung Intercept on Virgin Mobile. Both offer nation-wide coverage on Sprint’s network, but go with the Optimus V if your office uses Microsoft Exchange.
If you don’t have a company-provided laptop, consider buying a netbook for travel. They’re small, cheap, and easy on the batteries. They’re perfect for travel. Don’t bring your $2,000 MacBook Air. Get a $300 netbook (with a built-in camera for Skype). And if you want internet on the go, consider Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go
Explore
Thanks to poor sleep, too much drink, and no commute, you’re probably going to have some time in the morning. Avoid the temptation to spend it at the hotel buffet and don’t waste it watching the Today Show – get outside. Pick a direction and walk. This is your only chance to see the city you’re in. Take a look around, stop for a coffee, scope dinner spots. You’ll see the city’s personality, find a few hidden corners, and maybe figure out a plan for the evening.
At the very least, this gives you something to talk about. And your clients and co-workers will be impressed when you tell them about the great streets you found and cool spots you walked by. They’re proud of their city … and it’s not because of the Marriott. Get outside and figure out why.
Traveling through the Marriott Archipelago should be fun, but without the right mindset it can feel like a prison sentence, just with nicer cells. If you’ve got your own business travel tips to share, please post them in the comments.
GREAT advice. And now, at 4:30am, I want whiskey.
i dunno about just a computer bag and a duffel bag — walking through an airport from terminal A to terminal Z with those two hanging off your arms can be quite a …. drag, ha ha. for me and most travelers, i think a wheeled rollaboard of some sort makes mmmmuch more sense. you can prop your computer bag on top of it and off you go, no weight at all. but isn’t that obvious? am i missing something here? does that duffel bag have wheels?
Great article. This is the stuff that sets Dappered.com apart in my opinion. Keep it up!
Wheeled bags require tremendous discipline to pack lightly. I find that I nearly always over-pack unless I have to physically carry my bag, so I don’t mind the workout — I prefer it.
I’m a gym rat. And whenever I’m travelling for either business or pleasure, I always make sure to hit up the local CrossFit affiliate for a kick-ass workout. Having to sit through sleep-inducing presentations and mind-numbing breakout sessions is totally negated by the anticipation of dropping in on the local CrossFit gym for a brutal workout with other CrossFit junkies.
Any suggestions for mobile internet for the international traveler?
Checking out the local chowhound board for the city will also help in finding good places to eat.
there will be whiskey-appropriate glasses in your room…
True, but I would think twice about drinking from hotel room glasses unless I washed them myself. It is my understanding that it is common practice to simply wipe down glasses with a used towel, at least for the glasses in the bathroom. Most hotels just aren’t going to go through the bother of hauling glasses back and forth to a dishwasher.
Maids at even some supposedly “luxury” hotels are given 20-25 minutes to clean a room which makes it nearly impossible to do anything other than vacuum and change the sheets, and they don’t always even do that.
Makes me glad I don’t have to travel for business. Like sleeping in my own bed and cooking in my own kitchen.
Why do you recommend skipping the breakfast buffet? This is my absolute favourite part of hotels. Wake up and enjoy a huge selection of food!
On a different note, the last time I went on a business trip, everyone from the company stayed at an $150/night chain. I said thanks but no thanks and booked my own place – a little room in a hostel – for $50/night. I got weird looks, but in the end, the company appreciated me saving them a few bucks and I loved the place. Nice location, live music in the lounge, cool people all around.
Whiskey will clean a glass better than soap.
Bro, I heard you’re into CrossFit, confirm/deny?
As someone who is traveling for non-vacation purposes for the first time next week, I appreciate this advice. Definitely would not have thought of the whiskey part on my first trip! A helpful and concise article.
As a occasional business traveler, no to the duffel. Get yourself a 16″ wheeled tote (Victorinox Werks or similar), you can put your laptop bag on top of it and save your shoulders. I have had to many experiences standing in lines for extended periods of time or waiting for planes that have been lost (yes they lost the plane). I tried the duffel for a while, but it was just too awkward especially, especially when carrying an additional laptop bag.
The bit about hitting a convenience store is golden advice, hotels as a whole serve awful breakfast and those mini bars are crazy expensive.
I am a big fan of my Evo 4G combined with PDAnet, it has literally saved me hundreds in hotel network fees.
Bring some gym clothes and running shoes, either use the hotel gym or hit the pavement, I have had many interesting encounters in hotel gyms and running in new cities.
Some states do not allow liquor to be sold in convenience stores, particularly on the West coast. Unfortunate, but true. Apart from that, whiskey drinkers need to start moving away from Jack Daniels. There are far better choices for a similar price. Jim Beam Black is a classic, and Knob Creek is a good choice.
For that matter, why not choose a high quality sipping rum or cognac?
Bit late to the party, but…if you pack your roll-about light enough, the computer bag can fit inside, eliminating 1 piece of luggage to haul through the airport. Don’t put it inside until after security though, otherwise you’re creating a security line hassle. Then with a half-packed suitcase, you’ve room for all the books you picked out at the local used bookshop, local whiskey from the Bourbon Trail, etc.