Bring Wellness into Your Travel Plans
Ask any Road Warrior and you’ll learn that business travel can be disruptive. It interrupts sleep, exercise and eating, all of which can have a huge effect on overall health and well-being. A 2015 Harvard Business Review article stated that frequent business travel accelerates aging and increases the likelihood of suffering a stroke or heart attack. Not to mention, jet lag can increase stress, mood swings, disorientation, and gastrointestinal distress.
Regular travelers are fighting an uphill battle to stay healthy. It’s imperative to make adjustments to policy, process, and trip behavior to keep everyone in top shape.
Share “Healthy Travel” Tips
It’s our responsibility as TMCs and travel managers to communicate best practices to our travelers to make their time on the road as effective and stress-free as possible. Regularly pass along information that will show travelers how to better care for themselves while in transit. Here are just a few pointers travelers should keep in mind:
Avoid Alcohol and Junk Food: Travel is already exhausting and dehydrating. Consuming alcohol, salts, and sugars can worsen these conditions. Drink plenty of water and make smart food choices whenever possible. It even helps to pack food for the plane to avoid the sugary, salty, and often overpriced airport snacks.
Prepare for Jet-lag: If you’re crossing time zones, it may help lessen the shock to adjust your sleep schedule a few days prior to your trip and slowly allow your body to adjust to your new sleeping patterns. If you are boarding an international flight, packing a sleep supplement or OTC sleep aid may also help.
Exercise (when you can!): It can be incredibly difficult to squeeze in a full workout while traveling, so it might be helpful to adopt the practice of “micro workouts.” Get up and walk the plane and do a few stretches. Get in a few dozen push-ups or sit-ups in the hotel room. Walk during your lunch break. Anytime you can find to fit in a little activity will help.
Take Vitamins: It is no surprise that between the recycled air and hundreds of passengers, airplanes can be a breeding ground for germs. Protect yourself with regular vitamin supplements and even increase your intake of Vitamin C and Zinc right before traveling.
Reduce Traveler Stress
Travel-induced stress doesn’t always stem from the trip itself. Booking travel, submitting expense reports, managing a profile; all of these things can place extra burdens on employees who travel. Thanks to innovative technology, TMCs offer more and more solutions to help reduce traveler friction while increasing traveler efficiency. Consider working with a TMC to help update your policies. Making changes such as booking in advance, choosing preferred vendors, and calling an expert travel consultant for complex, international bookings can make all the difference. You can also streamline the expense process with expense tool and credit card integrations. For example, Adelman’s Global Payment options include the use of virtual cards that, when used with SAP Concur Expense and Travel tools, can feed data directly into an expense report.
Organization makes a huge difference as well. According to Travelport’s 2018 Digital Traveler Survey, travelers depend on between 10 and 12 applications to book and manage travel. Adelman has condensed its services into one easy to use application where you can book travel, receive notifications, update a profile, call an Uber, order dinner, and much more. This consolidation means less clutter and confusion and more control.
Incorporate “Bleisure” into your Travel Practices
According to a GBTA survey in 2017, 37 percent of North American business travelers extended a work trip for leisure. Of this group, Millennials made up the biggest portion of travelers engaging in “bleisure.” On the other hand, nearly 20 percent of business travelers decline adding vacation days to a business trip because of the fear of how it would be perceived by supervisors. A few extra days to relax and recuperate can help a traveler recover from a pressure-filled trip. Travelers should be encouraged to take advantage of what is often considered to be a “perk” of jobs that include strenuous traveling. Work with department managers to communicate what the policy parameters are around extending business trips and emphasize how potential changes would improve employee health and satisfaction.
Adelman cares for the health and wellness of all of our clients and partners. To learn more about how a partnership with Adelman can aid in the welfare of your travelers, contact us a call today at 800-248-5562 to get started.