How to minimize your costs when traveling for business meetings

While overseas business meetings can be very useful for your business – allowing you to network and build relationships with new clients or partners in another part of the world – they can also be extremely expensive.

And this for many reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that flights, accommodation, and other related travel costs can add up quickly, leaving your business with a big bill at the end of the trip. It can quickly turn into a waste of money if your meetings aren’t successful.

The second reason is that business travel takes you out of your usual work environment, forcing you to work twice as hard on your return to catch up. They also deprive your business of your skills for an extended period, which reduces the overall productivity of the business.

While there is no way to eliminate these inconveniences, you can still implement several simple tips and methods to save yourself time and money.

Here’s how to keep your costs down when you travel for business meetings:

Don’t waste time and money organizing paperwork

One of the costliest and longest aspects of traveling to business meetings is the mountain of paperwork and administrative tasks you will have to complete to attend the meeting. These tasks range from updating your passport and finding the right visa, to haggling over hotel prices and finding flights.

Additionally, these administrative tasks continue when you arrive at the meeting. If you’re in charge of organizing the meeting or conference, for example, you’ll probably want to impress your prospects by finding interesting local restaurants or events, which you can attend together.

All of this takes time, effort and money, which is best spent on your job. One way to solve this dilemma is to use a business travel service. These management teams organize your entire business trip for you, from finding the cheapest flights to finding interesting local events to attend. This allows you to concentrate on your work and saves you a considerable amount of money in the process.

Take your work with you when you travel

One of the easiest ways to get through your job is to never let it pile up.

While it may be tempting to think of your overseas business trip as an extended one, you may find it easier to keep up to date with your workload.

While waiting in airport departure lounges, during the flights themselves and in your hotel room, you will have a lot of free time to perform simple tasks or even to reply to your emails.

Better to invest in one successful meeting than five unproductive meetings

One of the reasons that business travel can become so expensive is that it exceeds forecasts or require subsequent meetings, two factors that can cause your spending to skyrocket.

To avoid this, it may be more effective in the long run to have a single long meeting rather than several short meetings. While not always desirable, increasing the pace of your meetings (without sacrificing precision) will give you more time to work out details.