The Joys of Changing Travel Plans
Just before boarding my flight to NYC this morning, I received a message on my Blackberry Storm from my sales supervisor that I would only be staying in New York for a day and would have to reschedule my plans to insert a new destination to my schedule.
Generally speaking it’s really a pain to have to make changes when you are out on the road. Anyone that has had to do this more than once will likely agree with me.
Since the plane was delayed about 45 minutes on the tarmac (remind me to share my “lovely” thoughts on this phenomenon another time!) I decided to crank up the web browser on the Storm and see if I could find some business hotels for the new stops on my itinerary.
If you are fortunate enough to have a company that will pay for your smart phone and give you a data plan (which I use to connect to my laptop via Bluetooth) then you can make these sort of searches quickly, and usually rather painlessly. In the past, it meant getting on the phone and spending hours sometimes just getting new flight times, and booking hotels (if you found the availability.)
My advice for being ready for the inevitable? Know how to use your mobile communications devices. By spending personal time really diving deep into my Storm, setting up the data connection to my laptop, etc., I am able to adjust to change much better today than when I started business travel over 12 years ago.
Do you have any interesting anecdotes about having to change directions mid-stream? I’d love to hear about them!
Related posts:
-
Who Am I?
Just a fellow business traveler who's been hopping from city to city across the country for years now!