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Tips and Tricks for Last Minute Business Trips
Copyright 2005 Smooth Hound
Business trips can often take place at the last minute.
Something crops up that just absolutely has to be sorted
out face to face. Which means if your job could potentially
involve business travel, its essential to be prepare as
much as possible in advance.
In general, all travel trips are being booked later and
later, so unless theres a major conference going on in
your destination city, you should be able to find somewhere
to stay. What can be more difficult to ensure is that its
somewhere you want to stay and that its within your budget.
If you know your job is likely to involve travel, its
worth planning ahead and setting up a new folder in your
bookmarks so that youre not hunting around the search
engines, desperately trying to find your preferred airlines
and hotel bookers.
Start your search while youre not rushed!
Make sure that you bookmark at least two of everything, in
case the site you use doesnt have anything available for
your trip.
For flights, choose one of the sites that lists lots of
different airlines. But remember that these dont always
list the budget airlines, so bookmark the web site of any
budget airline that flies from your local airport.
When choosing flights, make sure that you check the number
of stopovers. This is easily missed when you are traveling
at the last minute. Stopovers can add hours to a flight
time and they increase the likelihood of delays on your
journey.
Taxi journeys from the airport to your final destination
should be straightforward. But take the precaution of
checking the likely fare before accepting the ride, even if
the cab has a meter to display the price. Its not unheard
of for taxi drivers to take a longer route than necessary
if they perceive that you arent local to their city.
If its close enough to travel by car, driving will be your
best option. Again, bookmark your favorite route planning
site so that you can call on it at short notice. If you
havent used a route planning service before, test it out
by entering a journey you do regularly to see how good the
directions are. Not all online route planners are created
equal!
When you reach your destination, you will probably need to
get hotel accommodation booked.
For peace of mind, its worth booking before you set off
for your trip. Some hotels will offer an online booking
service but you need to be aware that these services dont
always show all the rooms available, especially at the last
minute. If you cant get your chosen room online, remember
that you can always use the telephone were so used to
doing everything online nowadays that we can sometimes
forget this!
Because web sites prefer you to book using their online
system, you may need to have a directory enquiries number
to hand so that you can find out the hotels contact
details. If theyre fully booked when you call, most hotel
receptionists will be able to recommend somewhere else to
stay.
Also make yourself a pre-travel check list ahead of time.
This should include things like flight, car rental and
hotel reservations as well as the usual things you would
pack for any trip.
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Smooth Hound http://www.s-h-systems.co.uk offers affordable
hotel and guest house accommodation throughout the world.
More articles by Smooth Hound - http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Smooth-Hound-410/
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