By Chloe Taylor

If frequent travel is a regular aspect of your job, your life might often seem too hectic and stressful to control. Instead of feeling like welcome holidays, business trips turn into chores you dread every time they come up.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean your life needs to be so imbalanced and unhealthy. If you want to achieve a better work-life balance while travelling for business, while also allowing yourself to enjoy these experiences more, here are some essential tips that might help.

Choose More Attractive Destinations

Even though business trips could often feel quite stressful and tiring, the entire experience might be a more enjoyable if your journey involves more scenic, unique, and interesting destinations. If at all possible, consider asking your employer whether you could travel to a more enticing destination, or even select more attractive places to visit from the list of upcoming business trips.

While it might seem like a small change, simply visiting a new location or a destination you particularly enjoy could help to ease some travel-associated stress, and allow you to feel more excited about necessary corporate trips.

Consider Extending Your Business Trips

Regardless of the travel destination, it’s unlikely your business trip will end up feeling like a holiday at all if you’re forced to cram all of your responsibilities into one short weekend, for instance. For that reason, it might be a good idea to extend your corporate travels whenever possible, whether that means asking your employer for a couple of extra days that will help you manage your time better, or even utilizing any holiday entitlement you might have.

Apart from allowing you to enjoy your travel destination more, this will also give you the opportunity to construct a looser and more efficient itinerary, thus making for safe and practical travel overall.

Opt For Comfortable Accommodation

Business meetings, conferences, and busy schedules can quickly become overwhelming when travelling, which is why dedicated downtime in a safe and cosy place is essential for optimal work/life balance. To that end, it might be wise to consider a different form of accommodation such as a comfortable studio apartment situated in a prime city location.

Apart from providing a private room and bathroom, such an apartment also offers other handy amenities like a kitchen and a lounge, thus giving you both work-friendly areas where you can take care of necessary business, as well as a cosy and homely space to relax after a long day.

Make The Most Of Your Travels

Among the most life-saving business travel hacks that help to maintain a healthy work/life balance is simply enjoying your destination as much as possible. This could mean visiting famous sights and attractions in the area, going to the best local restaurants, or simply walking around the neighbourhood if you’re short on time.

Even if you haven’t managed to extend your business trip, you could always utilise hacks such as scheduling meetings in more scenic locations, instead of being stuck in the office. No matter what you decide to do, enjoying your travel destination more will allow you to broaden your horizons, and become a calmer and happier person.

Try To Maintain A Set Routine

It’s a well-known fact that having a set daily routine is the key to living a healthy and balanced life, but many fail to consider the positive impact maintaining that routine while travelling could have on your well-being as well.

For instance, if you enjoy exercising in the morning, visit a gym nearby or even go for a jog around the neighbourhood, maintain your healthy eating habits by cooking at the accommodation or by visiting healthy local restaurants, or schedule some time at the end of the day for reading, taking a hot bath, or anything else that might help you relax and unwind, for the ideal work/life balance while travelling.

Stay In Touch With Loved Ones

Partners, friends, and family members tend to make our lives richer, happier, and truly worth living. However, travelling frequently and being away from those we love can be incredibly difficult, often causing feelings of loneliness and sadness.

For that reason, you might want to take advantage of technology in order to stay in touch with the ones you love most, whether that means calling your parents to ask them about their day, texting your best friends to catch up, or even video calling your children to read them a bedtime story. No matter what you choose to do, making an effort to nurture your most important relationships even while you’re away is truly essential for optimal work/life balance.

Although frequent business travel can often feel quite draining, both physically and emotionally, maintaining healthy routines, keeping in touch with loved ones, and simply immersing yourself in all aspects of travel will help you achieve that work/life balance you are striving for.

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