The web is a wonderful tool.  It provides us with useful information (as well as whimsical, amusing, and outright weird).  One of the best ‘inventions’ in recent years is information aggregator sites.  The most common aggregators are those that will search for a string and show websites that may be related.  There are several websites out there that will do this; I’m a fan of Google, but know others who are fans of other aggregators.  Aggregators are also industry-specific – the most common/well-known ones are probably travel sites.

Oftentimes, in the not-so-distant past, when a traveler wanted to find out the rates for a car, hotel, or airline, they would visit each site (or call a travel agent).  Now, most travelers will visit a site like kayak, expedia, travelocity, hotwire, Priceline, etc. to shop for several fares simultaneously – and will book through these sites, or may do additional research based on the results.

What other aggregator sites are you a fan of?

When I first started traveling for business, a good friend of mine took me aside and gave me three valuable pieces of advice:

1)  Plan downtime into every trip.  Don’t schedule every minute of the trip with meetings, meals, and entertainment; allow yourself some alone time (to soak in a tub, read a book, call the family, explore the local area, etc.)

2)  Be healthy on the road.  Don’t use a business expense account as an excuse to eat too much, drink too much, and exercise too little.  Exercise after work and before dinner – every night.

3)  Plan for the worst, and hope for the best.  This involved losing things (rental car keys, airline tickets (back when we still had paper tickets), and hotel room keys) – so he developed, and shared with me, his system:

a)  Have a place in your briefcase or purse where these 3 things go – and put them there every time.  For him, it’s an outside flap on his briefcase while on the road, and the bedside table in the hotel room.  For me, it’s a specific location in my purse, whether in the hotel or on the road.

The benefits to this?  In case of an emergency, you can grab these things and be out of the hotel in less than 10 seconds – with a way to get home, get back in, or drive away.

In 15 years of travel, I’ve only had to evacuate 3 times – but all 3 times I was outside with my purse, keys, phone, etc. while others around me were wondering how to get back into their room, angry that they forgot their car keys, or worried that their wallet was still in the room.

b)  Always leave an itinerary, with hotel phone numbers, office numbers, etc. with someone ‘back at the ranch’ so that they can get in contact with you if you lose your cell phone or are out of service.

Stay tuned for Part 2 –