White Collar Travel: Hotel Behavior Honed by Habit

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Spend enough time on the road, and your instinct takes over. Soldiers would liken it to their training kicking in. unlike the warriors who protect our way of life, the business traveler’s reflex isn’t intentional. Rather, it evolves from experience and is honed by habit. After a while, you’re “always on” … which is what you want. When a networking opportunity arises – or you get the chance to pick up some competitive intelligence – you want to be ready to pounce.

A friend of mine was headed to Washington, D.C. a few years ago and invited me to tag along. I was involved with a small consulting company at that point and was between projects (which is code for: “I needed one”), so I dashed off with him for a few days. Taking advantage of the status I had with Hilton, I got us a suite on the club level, where we dropped our bags before heading to the lounge.

Again, I had no business plans for this jaunt. But, one of the other people in the lounge atop the Hilton Embassy Row turned to me and asked those four fecund words: “What do you do?” Forgetting my friend, I went from elevator pitch to the intricacies of my company’s style to a friendly game of “mine is bigger” (confession: his was) – standard fare among itinerant white collar folk. It ended with the swapping of cards, though we never spoke to each other again (and knew that we wouldn’t).It didn’t matter that the effort would lead to nothing – I’d suspected the outcome from the start, and I’m sure he did, too. I wound up in character because I couldn’t help it. This one-time trip offered little potential, but my response was driven by years of making connections. If I’d been on a long-term project, I might have seen the guy again in the lounge the next week. Maybe some business would have come from it.

And, my case is not unique. My mentor from an early consulting job once cut himself off mid-sentence when he heard someone at another table mention a competitor’s name. He listened intently for a few minutes before continuing with what he was saying. On planes, of course, we all talk, poke and prod to find a new client or get a sense of what the competition is up to.

The frequent business traveler, after a while, surrenders to the job – sometimes to a caricature of it. It’s only recognized as an occupational hazard years after you’ve given up the life, usually. Until then, it’s like a heartbeat – something the mind-body duality does for you.

White Collar Travel: Don’t judge a business traveler by his mileage account

by Tom Johansmeyer on

There is something incredible about mileage balances that stretch to six digits. The travelers who have them, you suspect, must be the real deal, living entirely on the road. There’s another class of business traveler, however, who is both quite valuable to the airline and is frequently overlooked. They fly domestic, but usually less than 2,000 miles a week. They’ll get short breaks of a few weeks every now and then. As a result, they don’t rack up the miles and miss many of the perks. But, they spend a small fortune over to the airlines every year.

These travelers will never make platinum status – many won’t even see gold. They lose the bragging rights that come with abundant mileage counts but still carry their lives in the bags under their eyes. How do these business travelers get shafted? Let us count the ways …1. Upgrades are rare
They fly all the time but only occasionally find themselves at the front of the plane. To these guys, scoring an exit row seat on the aisle becomes a stroke of good fortune.

2. Vacation dreams vanish
Since they don’t accumulate many miles, these business travelers can’t console themselves with dreams of comp’ed spa treatments in unusual locations. If they pick up enough miles in a year to get an overseas flight, they’ll have to take the perk in coach.

3. They spend more for comfort
Out of pocket, these passengers make purchases to render travel more tolerable. Food, magazines and gadgets become necessary to survival in this weekly grind. Upgrades mean that passengers don’t have to invest as much in their own sanity.

4. They lose bragging rights at the office
It doesn’t sound like much to the uninitiated – and looking back, this activity seems downright idiotic. But, it’s easy to get caught up in the mileage game. The frequent short-haulers lose out, and they hear about it back at the office.

5. They know the airlines don’t care about them
The shorter domestic flights don’t always cost less than the longer ones, but unlike the hotels, airlines don’t reward spending. Instead, they recognize distance. A business traveler flying from New York to Austin every week for a year can spend as much as one running from Boston to San Francisco for the same length of time – maybe even more. But, the benefit will never be the same.

White Collar Travel: The upgrade rotation

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Routine often breeds insight, and the form of business travel that once ruled my life was one of the variety that Ralph Waldo Emerson would have called “the hobgoblin of little minds.” During one project, which involved seven months of weekly roundtrips to Omaha (and platinum status on Northwest by June), I’d get to Logan Airport every Monday morning and see the same names called for upgrades. It was demoralizing. As my miles accumulated, I knew that theirs were, too, leaving me no closer to my goal.

Then, a strange thing happened when I crossed from silver to gold: I started to get the bump. The people normally summoned up to the gate – who I had come to know by sight and the first three letters of their last name – were no longer on my flight. The upgrade candidates behind them were getting the first nod, and occasionally, I’d pick up some first class table scraps. Two months later, I was at the top of the list.

My business partner, who joined me in this weekly grind, noticed the change, as well. Having gotten this far, it didn’t take us long to put the rest together. The people who used to beat us to the upgrades had rolled off their projects: their work was done, and they had moved on to gigs in other cities. We still had plenty of Omaha time in front of us and relished the thought of having to compete with only the people paying for first class, and the occasional heavy-hitter who was taking a rare trip in our direction.Watching this unannounced changing of the guard is good for a morale boost in a life where pleasant surprises just aren’t frequent enough. It entails a sense of accomplishment, a touch of prestige and an expectation of a little more comfort. Everything that cuts your way carries disproportionate weight when you’re a road warrior.

So, if you’re among the many making the weekly “commute” to another part of the country on a long-term project, watch the pre-boarding process, and celebrate when those familiar faces disappear. It means you’re getting closer to a wider seat and coffee in a ceramic mug. There’s a rhythm to business travel, much of it defined by the work the passengers do. Get in synch with it, and the lifestyle becomes much easier to bear.