What I Have Learned: Meredith Wardell
School & Library Marketing Assistant, Scholastic
Traveling For Work
Working on the School & Library team, I have had the amazing opportunity to travel for library and educator conferences and conventions. Members of all different departments sometimes get to join us on these trips, so if you are about to enter the conference circuit for the first time (or just going on your own business trip), below are some of the hard-earned tips I’ve learned on my very slow journey of one day seeing every conference center in the country:
Check your company’s travel policies before you leave for your trip.
Every company is different, but knowing your travel policy will set you up for success and give you some peace of mind before you leave. When planning your trip, the policy will let you know your company’s preferred airlines, hotels, and car services, which will often lead to discounts, and occasionally bonus membership benefits that you can use for personal trips later. During your trip, your company’s travel policy will guide you on your approved daily budgets for meals and hotels, as well as instructions for how to be reimbursed for travel expenses.
Take pictures of any receipts that you accumulate from travel expenses immediately!
It is shockingly easy to lose a receipt. You buy a coffee in the morning, you ask for the receipt from the cashier, you throw it in your bag on the way to the convention center, and suddenly you never see it again! It’s important to ensure that you are able to report all of your expenses on time, but it can be overwhelming to go through everything after the trip. Try to take pictures of your receipts as you get them. The future you will thank you!
If your company has a system for reporting expenses, check to see if they have an app version for your phone that you can use on the go. That way you can upload receipts from your travel expenses as soon as you get them.
Also, check to see if you qualify for a company credit card. This will help you avoid all of the delays that most of us can ill afford when waiting to be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses.
Take advantage of reward programs with airlines and hotels.
Apply membership benefits like frequent flyer miles and hotel honor points to all of your trips. It may not add up to much at first, but your bonus points can accumulate fast, and you can eventually use them for personal trips in the future. Once you sign up, you may even get small perks for free, like complimentary water bottles and free Wi-Fi. You never know when it will come in handy in the future!
Check to see if the airline or hotel has any travel partners that you can link your membership through to get more bonus points. For example, Delta Airlines allows you to link your loyalty number to Starbucks and Lyft, which allows you to gain extra travel points with each purchase.
Compile a conference bag as if you were about to embark on a hike.
As a base, make sure to take emergency snacks, water, mints/gum, hand sanitizer, tissues, chapstick, and your preferred brand of headache relief (it will be a long day). From there, add whatever you see fit to get you through a day on your feet with limited breaks.
A business trip is also a great time to jump start your own vacation.
If the timing works out, it can be a perfect opportunity to take some time off right after the conference. You can extend your stay by a day (or a few!) to actually get to explore, or you can use the company paid flight as a starting point for your own adventure!
Try to carve out some time to actually do some site seeing!
Conference schedules are packed so tight that time can be hard to come by and sleep is precious. But even if it’s something incredibly small, I like to try to do at least one thing for myself in each city I get to visit. For me, that usually means a food checklist of some sort (beignets in New Orleans or breakfast tacos in Austin), or even just a brief walk through the city to remind myself that something does, in fact, exist outside of a windowless convention center. Yes, you are on a business trip, and yes, work still needs to be done, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find ways to embrace a new city, even if it’s momentary.
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