My 2015 Business Travel Summary and Some Thoughts on Travel Friction

For those not familiar with the term, Travel Friction is the “wear and tear” that business travelers experience when travel is taking place too frequently or where the traveling they do harms their well-being.

Today, I want to share my 2015 business travel summary. It will perhaps provide a different perspective on the life of a business traveler. In this post, I will focus on time on airplanes and hotel nights. There are other aspects of the overall business travel experience. I believe these two areas offer some of the most eye-opening pieces of data about Business Travel.

2015 BUSINESS TRAVEL SUMMARY – AIR:

• Flew to 11 cities in seven countries for Business
• I got on a plane 29 times for Business.
• Flew 40016 miles total in 2015 for Business (Actual distance flown)
• I spent 88.5 hours on a plane for business trips (the equivalent of 11.06 workdays). Of which ¾, or 65.75 hours, occurred on personal time (outside Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

 2015 BUSINESS TRAVEL SUMMARY – HOTEL:

• I stayed in 14 hotels across ten cities in six countries. Accumulated a total of 40 hotel nights on business trips. 25% of which occurred on weekends (Personal Time)

tClara is a company that delivers high-value analyses of corporate travel data. According to tClara, the top 5% of Business Travelers, or “Road Warriors,” spend an average of 214 hours on an airplane every year. From that, 65% happens in personal time. Additionally, they spend an average of 68 nights away from home. Ten of those nights on weekends.

Based on my 2015 business travel summary, I am by no means a Road Warrior. But I still managed to spend an excessive amount of personal time traveling. SHRM is the Society for Human Resource Management. According to SHRM, employees with one year of service receive an average of nine paid vacation days. I spent almost as much time (8.22 days) sitting on an airplane for business trips outside of office hours. That’s more than a week and a half lost with my family to travel.

From my 2015 Business Travel summary, you can see I spent over 40 nights on the road. Spending 40 nights away from home is challenging on two fronts—the most important, of course, on the family front. For example, during one of my trips, I got a message from my nine-year-old daughter to let me know about a tornado warning. She, her brother, and her mom were in the bathroom tub, taking cover and waiting for the sirens to stop. She was scared and wished I was there to protect her. It was one of the most vulnerable and stressful moments I have experienced. Thankfully, no tornadoes touched down. Sacrificing ten weekend days with the kids because I was traveling to or from home wasn’t fun either.

The other front has to do with productivity. Being out for 40 nights equates to eight work weeks (that’s right, two months!) that I did not spend at the office. We indeed live in incredible times where you can connect and be productive from almost anywhere.  I still found myself with accumulated work (emails, proposals, administrative tasks, etc.). It made me feel stressed and anxious. I think I do a good job managing the day-to-day aspects of my work while on the road. That being said, I was too exhausted to catch up. 

As it turns out, when you are traveling for business, often, your days end up being much longer than when you are in the office. A typical day on the road for me starts with early morning laptop work, usually at 7 a.m. And it ends after dinner with customers, typically around 11 p.m. That means that generally, my road days were 14 – 16 hours long. No wonder I felt exhausted at the end of the day.

Now imagine the effect on a Road Warrior. If we go by tClara’s study, they spend an average of 139 hours of their personal time in an airplane every year. That is 17.38 workdays. This means that some of your Road Warriors are spending more of their personal time sitting on a plane traveling to represent your organization than what they get on paid vacation time!

Jet lag brings adverse effects. Some are: speeding aging and increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Other risks are also associated with frequent air travel like deep-vein thrombosis on long-haul flights. According to a recent study by the University of Surrey in Britain, and Linnaeus University, in Sweden, people who fly more than 85,000 miles a year exceed the regulatory limit for radiation exposure. 

Road Warriors also spend an average of 68 nights on the road, that’s roughly 2.5 months away from home. From a social standpoint, friendships suffer—this due to business travelers prioritizing their immediate family once they arrive from their trips. There are also family issues. Marriages suffer as the person that stays at home takes on more responsibilities. Additionally, children’s behaviors suffer due to their time apart as well. All this leads to psychological issues. A study of 10,000 World Bank employees found that business travelers were three times more likely to file psychological insurance claims. 

Why is this important to your organization? Think about who your road warriors are. They are some of your most valued team members, and losing them can be very costly. According to SHRM, the cost to replace an employee is between 90% and 200% of their salary. According to tClara, the top 15% of travelers’ turnover rate is between 10% and 16%.

I am very fortunate to have a lot of flexibility with my business travel decisions. We operate the most extensive VIP lounge access program globally, and I get to visit our lounges when I travel. I also get matching time off for the personal time I’ve spent traveling for business. And have flexibility with my office schedule to accommodate family needs. Things like: attend recitals, doctor appointments, school meetings, etc.

Make no mistake; as an employee, these points are crucial to me. I feel valued and supported. It also shows commitment to my well-being and that my company understands what is important to me. Therefore, it allows me to represent the company in the best way possible.

It is great to see many organizations starting to look at the Human Cost of business travel. Some are already adjusting their travel policies to mitigate Travel Friction.

Employees that feel valued are more engaged, and engaged employees deliver better results, which benefits organizations with higher revenues. It also helps reduce cost by reducing turnover rates and the costs associated with it.

Finally, it matters because business travel is not going anywhere. According to the latest GBTA (Global Business Travel Association) Business Traveler Sentiment Index™ – research from the GBTA Foundation, Millennials are nearly twice as likely to travel more for business than Baby Boomers (45 % to 26%). Also, a substantial majority of Millennials (57%) believe technology can never replace face-to-face meetings to get business done. 

A special thanks to Scott Gillespie, Managing Partner from tClara, who is such a great advocate for making the business travel experience better. A lot of his research is used in this article.

I hope this 2015 business travel summary provides some insight that can be useful. I am ready for another great year! Happy 2016!

This article is also available on LinkedIn.