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Making the Most of Business Trip Hotel Stays

For many of you who are businessman and businesswomen, traveling becomes second nature. As you jump from city to city, it gets to the point where people ask you what you do for a living and you have to refrain from saying, “I’m a Nomad, what about you?” Traveling for business can certainly be a pain in the bags, but with a few simple changes, you may find the transition from home to away to be easier than assumed.

There are several things you can do to improve a business trip. From taking a picture of your family and placing it on the hotel room desk to making sure you’ve packed a portable phone charger so that your cell phone will never be dead in times of homesickness, little things add up to a successful trip. The following is a list of things that can make your business trip feel less like work.

Unpack: If anyone were to take a survey on the amount of people who actually unpack while staying in a hotel, they’d probably find that most people don’t. Ignoring the hotel closet and hotel dresser, many people simply plop their suitcase on the floor and pull things from its crevices on an as needed basis.

This may initially seem time saving, but, in the long run, it succeeds in making you feel as if you are living out of a suitcase, and not out of a hotel room. Taking a few moments to fold your slacks and place them into a dresser drawer, hang your suits in a closet, and adorn the bathroom counter with your toiletries is the first step in starting to feel more at home, even when you know you’re not.

Take Advantage of the Free Breakfast: Ah, breakfast. Giving it the Most Important Meal of the Day title has gone to its head, leaving us inferior seekers forced to search aimlessly through pantries and cupboards for that ideal box of cereal. In a perfect world, this wouldn’t happen; in a perfect world, breakfast would come to us. Well, when you’re staying in a hotel, chances are it does.

Most hotels offer a complimentary breakfast, with a wide selection of juice, coffee, bagels, donuts, muffins, fruit, and even waffles. Breakfast, when you’re on the road, is not only the most essential meal of the day, but it’s also the freest. Take advantage of it.

Go to the Gym: Gyms. In home life we might not have time for them. They are a far drive. They are overly crowded. They have monthly dues. In hotel life, however, the gym is only a few floors away: the excuses fly out the penthouse window.

Some hotels might not have a fitness center – or have a fitness center that consists of little more than a 1980’s exercise bike and a ten pound weight – but more and more hotels have jumped on the exercise band wagon and, these days, many hotels have state-of-the-art fitness centers on the premises. Spending a half hour or an hour in the gym each day on your business trip is not only good for your health, but it’s also good for your mind, helping to relieve any tension working on the road may cause.

See Some Sights: A business trip may take you to a place with very little to see. It may take you to cities of darkness and cities that always sleep rather than cities that are exciting. Still, whether you admit it or not, a business trip is a way to see the world, especially on the company dime.

Sure, you’re there to work, to wheel and deal, but businessmen and businesswomen also need some time to play. Taking a business trip to the UK or Canada or Roswell, New Mexico may be the only time you ever go to these places in your entire life. At least take a few hours, get out of your hotel room, and see some sights: eat at a famous restaurant, take in a local band, buy a souvenir for your kids or, if you’re attempting to climb the corporate ladder, your boss.