If you travel a lot on business, you will be well aware of the additional stresses such business trips can bring.
Preparing for travel can often involve time-consuming selection of which train or flight to take. Then there is the choice of the most appropriate place to stay – stick with a hotel brand you know, or opt for a different hotel that is closer to your first early morning meeting?
Once away on the trip, there is inevitably something you might need to work on, which requires documents or information that may not be readily to hand. How can you handle that, when it is back at base and not easily accessible from your point on the road?
These are just some of the reasons why the support of a virtual assistant is vital when travelling on business. The virtual assistant can take away many of the stresses of planning, executing and successfully completing a business trip, at home or overseas.
Right from the outset, when you use a virtual assistant to help plan your trip overseas, they will start by asking important questions that you may have forgotten. Is there at least six months remaining unexpired on your passport? What sort of visa are you going to need to have applied for, to gain access to the countries you are visiting? Get these basics wrong, and you will be turned back before getting close to your destination.
When you use a virtual assistant on a regular basis, they will get to know your preferred way of flying, including what type of aircraft seat you prefer, which airport terminals are your favourites, and which varieties of food you like when flying. All of these will be automatically used, when booking your next trip. Individually, they may be small, but they all make the trip pass much more smoothly.
A virtual assistant will research the best routes, flights and connections, along with the most appropriate hotels to stay in, and even where to park your car at the airport – unless they have arranged a taxi or chauffeur for you. They can arrange all the bookings, so that you simply have a fully pre-planned itinerary to follow, once the moment for starting the trip arrives.
Once you are on the trip, the virtual assistant can be relied upon to respond to emails and phone calls on your behalf, so that there is no backlog of work to do once you return. And they are often used to provide support in case of a sudden contact from a client while you are away. How much easier is it, to simply forward an email request to your virtual assistant, safe in the knowledge that they will largely deal with the matter in your absence? That might mean postponing something until you get back, but at the very least there will be a note in your diary telling you when to call someone back, and outlining what it is they want to discuss.
Finally, it is always reassuring to have a virtual assistant on call, should the trip start to fall badly off the plan. A defective aircraft, bad weather, erupting volcanoes are all items that have the potential to derail a travel itinerary. Things can be rearranged in a much more stress free way, by a virtual assistant, than by you if you are sitting stressed in a foreign airport terminal, your mobile phone fast running out of charge. From afar, they can look calmly at the situation, gather all the relevant information and make suitable rebooking’s and fresh arrangements as necessary. They can also keep family informed of any changes in return time, just so that spouse and children also avoid any nasty surprises along the way.
Why not get in touch with us today for a chat and what we can do to help your business run more smoothly.