I recently started traveling quite a bit for business. I'm trying to take advantage of everything I can in regards to frequent flyer programs and such. Luckily (so far) my company allows me to keep all traveling points and miles. I do have to use the corporate credit card though.

I have the rental car (my company uses Hertz) connected to the airline miles and the hotel program (HHiliton rewards) also gives mileage. I know there's probably some great ideas out there... so let us know!

What are your best business traveling tricks and hints?

Kat

I'll start with Hertz (more will come to mind....)

I assume you're in the Hertz Gold program. If not, you'll save 10-20 minutes per rental just by participating. Also, I stopped using Hertz points for air and hotel because they simply didn't amount to much. If you reserve on the web and use the code ZE1 in the partner field, you will acrrue points in Hertz' own program.

I guess my biggest tip overall is to go for mid-level medallion status everywhere. I'm never going to travel to enough of the same place over and over again to get the highest level, but having, say, silver Marriott & a strong Hampton/Hilton portfolio or silver medallion type levels on Delta and American means that you at least get some perk (earlier boarding, upgrade, whatever) on more than one.

Final thought before I let someone else have a turn. We began buying phone cards at Price Club/Costco and distributing them to travelers. Bought in two and three hour blocks, they're perfect for road warriors who can dial a toll-free number and avoid hotel surcharges.

Oh, and take the pens. You always need more pens!

Back when I was single a flight attendant became one. Didn't work out though, she was jet fueled and I was gassed.

Kat,
I have been traveling a lot for business lately (at that, I leave for two weeks in Tampa next week..) and I have found that the biggest perk is just having an all expenses paid trip to some really nice areas. In the past 5 years I have been to Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Mexico City.. and stateside, Tampa, Little Rock, Phoenix, El Paso, Raleigh, Virginia Beach, and Washington DC.... There is no way I could have seen all of these places on my own in that time period...

But, as for perks.. when you stay stateside, any time you stay at an Amerisuites and you are staying for more than 5 days, ask about being moved up to an executive suite... most of the time you can get the nicest suite at no charge when you have a long stay....
Also, sometimes you can schmooze the hotel to let you watch all the pay-per-view movies you want for free when you have a long stay.. Last week in Dallas I saw about 6 still in theater movies with out paying any extra..

I have to agree. I don't get to do much traveling for work - in fact, I've only done it once - but I would love to get a job requiring a bit more travel so I could see the world on someone else's dime. As it stands, I am slowly seeing bits and pieces of it on my own time and money.

Janice

Janice, this is an issue with which I'm very familiar. Most folks who don't travel see it as glamorous, or at least fun.

I have a colleague who suggests that the first 25 business trips one takes are fun, exciting, different, whatever. Those trips, he suggests, can occur at the rate of annually over 25 years, 5 a year for 5 years, or God forbid, all at once.

Once the 25 or so trips have been made, business travel is boring. The lines are the same, the food (really!) is the same, the airlines, the cars --- all the same.

I know Delta's flight #944 from Atlanta to Washington Dulles so well that I recognize the crew and equipment. It always parks at the same Dulles gate, and I can time to within three minutes when I should meet my wife outside. That's an unglamorous commute, not exciting.

So far this year, I've been in 20 or so different cities. I have two or three strong memories of those cities. River Walk in San Antonio was nice (spent one evening there for an hour or so - the other three nights in SA were hunched over a laptop in my room), I liked visiting Fort Bragg a couple of months ago and I got really sick in Boston in February, but that's about it.

But I passed my 25 years ago and probably reach that number every year now....

Seeing as how you have a lot more experience at it than I have, I'll have to take your word for it. But I also think that whether you always go to the same place makes a difference, as does whether you have a family.

I know on my one trip (to Columbus, OH, not exactly a mecca of tourism) I had a fabulous time. I was there from late Sunday afternoon to early Saturday evening, basically having Sunday night (dinner, movies, arcade) and Saturday (science museum) to myself. But each evening we went out to dinner and even though I didn't do anything terrible exciting, I had a great time. The people who didn't seem to enjoy it as much were either people who went to Columbus all the time or people who wanted to get home to their families.

Two of my best friends at my last job were Sales Engineers (a fancy name for consultants). They traveled a lot, to a lot of different places. When I first met them they had both had several years of frequent trips and both were still enjoying the travel. Then one got married and the travel became less enjoyable and more of a hassle because she had a reason to want to be home. My other friend got switched to a big client which meant that he was traveling mostly to the same two or three places all of the time. His enjoyment level lessened as well.

I can definitely see frequent travel to the same place or few places becoming a drag in a hurry, especially if you have people waiting for you at home. I'd like to get to travel a bit while I'm still unattached

To that end, I've started spending some of my money on travel - since Jan 2000 I've been to NYC 4 times plus to Philadelphia, St. Louis, Israel, on a Caribbean cruise (Bahamas, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas/St. John), and to Amsterdam. I have a trip to San Francisco/San Jose tentatively scheduled for October, one to Vegas in November, and one to Paris in February. It'd be nicer still if someone else would foot the bill. Maybe that will only be enjoyable the first 25 times. In that case, I've got 24 to go

Janice

I have learned something about business travel the last couple of days. I was supposed to fly to Tampa today for a major computer conversion. Obviously it was not going to happen. I then attempted to rent a car, but all the car rental companies in our area are imposing travel limits on their cars (something like 250 miles, Tampa is almost 1,000 miles away..)
Our company was running a charter bus from Little Rock (our corporate headquarters; only 3 hours away). In order to leave on time I needed to be there about the time they brought up that idea to me.

Needless to say, instead of spending two weeks in sunny Tampa Florida, I am now going to be stuck in my office teleconferencing 18 hours a day.

Do not get me wrong; none of this is a gripe. I just wanted to point out that when traveling for business, expect last minute –and I mean last minute- changes.