How Much Business Travel Is Too Much?

The day after Halloween, I found myself searching through the leftovers in our candy bowl. Curiously, the candy I was looking for wasn’t for me, it was for Emily. 

Emily isn’t a child we know. She’s a gate agent for Delta Airlines who usually works gate F7 at the Minneapolis airport. 

I adore Emily because, for a fistful of miniature peanut-butter cups, she’ll make double-sure my platinum status is enough to get me a first class upgrade! 

My wife gave me that blank stare that I usually get when I’m doing something crazy or stupid. "You know the gate agents by name?" 

"Only a few of the nicer ones," I said.

I knew where she was going with this; It’s probably time for me to travel a lot less than usual, especially since the holidays are coming. What about you, do you travel a lot?

Think You're a Frequent Traveler? Take the Test!

Here’s a list of things to consider; most of them didn’t bother me much, until I realized that most of the things on my list don’t apply to the majority of my fellow travelers.

You might travel too much if:

• You moved your family to a hub city to reduce the number of layovers and connections you had to endure and to shorten your drive home from the airport.
• Your car is 10 years old, but it only has 40,000 miles on it.
• You recognize flight attendants -- and you remember their first names.
• Flight attendants recognize YOU, and they remember what you like to drink!
• There’s a restaurant in your local airport, and they know your "usual" order.
• When you sign the room service bill in your hotel, you write in the room number you were assigned from LAST week’s hotel.
• You've eaten so much room service from so many Marriott hotels (or Hyatt, Hilton, whatever), that you can now order from any Marriott in the nation without seeing a menu.
• You've "test driven" more than 100 cars from rental agencies.
• You have a driver's license, a passport, and an international driver's license as forms of id.
• You know the make and model of an airplane, just by looking at it -- AND you can describe in detail the difference between an Airbus A320 and a Boeing 737.
• You know exactly what seat you want in an Airbus A330.
• You have enough frequent flier miles to take a free trip around the planet, first class. And yet you continue to collect them.
• You have enough hotel points to stay more than a month in any hotel that you choose.
• Your TV and all major appliances were purchased with some kind of frequent traveler points, books, or coupons.
• Your spouse freely redecorates or rearranges rooms and furniture in the house, and when you get home you fail to notice.
• You sleep like a baby on a pillow top mattress in a Marriott hotel, but you have trouble falling asleep at home.
• Before you buy any electronics, you ask yourself how well it will pack, if it will pass through security, and how big its transformer and power-cord are.
• You've had more than 10 shots to immunize yourself against various world diseases, and you carry a yellow Federal Immunization history record in your passport wallet.
• You HAVE a passport wallet.
• You renewed your passport before it expired because it was FULL.
• You flush with anger and resentment whenever you see the initials TSA.
• You know EXACTLY who takes AMX, VISA, Mastercard, and/or Dinersclub and who doesn't.

• You spend more time scheduling when you can be HOME than you do booking travel or going on the road!

EXTRA:  Please feel free to leave comments on this article! If you have questions for Ken regarding business travel, hotels, airplanes, etc, please send him a "Tweet" on his twitter account.  You can also follow Ken on Twitter @foodbreeze!