Well, business travel should be fun – it’s a way for you to get out of your routine and visit new places while meeting new people. The big upside of doing frugal business travel is that you can do what should be done, business-related, while enjoying the local community’s life and attractions that’s not available in many tour guides.
I don’t travel a lot due to some constraints (read: traveling with little children is challenging,) but my wife and I do enjoy traveling a lot. We are not into backpacking, but we do enjoy getting on and off public transportation and enjoy staying on small but friendly and warm budget hotels.
When we plan to travel – either for business, leisure or both – we look for information online. We don’t trust travel agents (many apologise!) mainly because we like the freedom to schedule our own journey. We visited travel blogs more than the rest because we learn more from the bloggers – nothing can beat personal experience when it comes to traveling.
How to spice up your business travel
That being said, one website that I would like to share with you is Beoo.com. It’s basically a community of people who enjoy traveling. You can start your search by entering your destination city and select whether you want to find local tour guides or fellow travelers.
Beoo.com is generally organised into two categories – tour guides and travelers. When I mention tour guides, I mean local people who you can contact to show you around the city. The tour guides can register themselves, offering their services or sharing their tips when someone is visiting their cities. You can also search travelers in Beoo.com – they share their traveling experience in a particular city, including their very own itineraries to help you out in getting in and around the cities you visit.
Unfortunately, not all registered users are as helpful as they can be, though… some just register to try the features and not offering anything valuable – so Beoo.com needs to manage the user list better. Nevertheless, it’s a great concept and would be very helpful for any business travelers who want to enjoy local community’s living.
One more business travel tip…
Here is one more tip to help you make the most of your business travel by looking for travel information online: Always look for testimonials and opinions.
There are plenty of quality travel review sites, as well as travel blogs, from which you should look for information about visiting to a particular city. I personally tend to avoid company websites – hotels, travel agents, etc. because they obviously won’t tell you everything. Better yet, visit Facebook pages of frequent travelers who share their itineraries and experience in traveling the world.
And yes – I’m a fan of Travel Channel’s Samantha Brown; I listen to everything she said about a particular place ;)
So, there you go – enjoy your next business travel better!
Ivan Widjaya
Business travel tips