10 New Years Resolutions for Business Travelers

As the calendar prepares to turn over and a new year stares us in the face it’s a great time to reflect on a busy year of travel and to consider what New Years Resolutions we might want to make for 2020.

We’ve crafted a short list of 10 New Years Resolutions for Business Travelers that describe some of the ways we plan to travel for work a little differently in 2020. .

Tell us what you think? How many of these apply to your business travel for 2020? Did we forget anything?

Before we dive into these in more detail, here’s a quick summary of the 10 New Years Resolutions for Business Travelers.

Travel Less
Be “present” more (when home)
Get upgraded more
Stay in less Hampton Inns and more Conrads
Do more Bleisure Travel
Get (really) serious about points and miles
Get Elite Status on your preferred airline (e.g. United 1K Status, or Southwest Preferred)
Get a nice travel perk using creative means (e.g. Southwest Companion Pass)
Travel a ~~little~~ lot more healthier
Explore more

Travel Less

For me, 2019 was a busy year. For the final half of the year I was on the road almost every week. That pace is never good for me or my family. Granted, I had a new job and now have employees all over the world and so I was spending time learning the system, meeting them, etc.

My hope is that 2020 is will entail a lot less travel although it’s not shaping up that way in January through February.

I think less travel is something all of us fellow travelers can get behind though. Meeting this resolutions means taking advantage of technology (like Google Hangouts Video Conferencing) a bit more and being more intentional about shortening trips to maximize time at home.

I am about 50/50 on whether I can achieve this resolution. How about you?

Be “present” more (when home)

For those of us who travel a lot it is critically important to “be home” when you are home. That means checking your email less, spending more 1:1 time with your family and getting the maximum value out of your time at home.

For some of us (myself included) this doesn’t come naturally to us. Not because we don’t love and miss our families, but because we are workaholics.

This is a really important new years resolution for me next year and not because I didn’t do a good job of it last year but I am concerned about it heading into 2020. I know me…

Get upgraded more

For the last few years my travel has been primarily domestic and on routes that Southwest had typically the most affordable pricing. Accordingly, I hit their top tiers pretty quickly. Southwest also has no first class.

In this new role I spend more time in areas where Southwest is not always the cheapest AND my company prefers I fly United instead. Additionally, there is a bit of international travel mixed in which of course means Southwest is out.

Around September I made the “all-in” switch to United and pretty much flew them the rest of the way on a Status Match. I still don’t have much status with them going into 2020 so my goal is to increase my status a little quicker this year (by spend via some larger International trips) and then as a result get upgraded much more frequently.

Stay in less Hampton Inns and more Conrads

This sort of goes along with the theme of getting upgraded more (in a roundabout way), but I’ve enjoyed staying at nicer hotels the last fewÂ years, but I tend to always pick the cheapest I can find without regard to location.

In 2020 I aim to stay a little nicer. Not more expensive, mind you, but definitely a little nicer.

Do more Bleisure Travel

I am all in on this cool trend. Bleisure travel is where you mix business travel with some personal travel. I’ve done this for years, but in 2020 we are going big and being far more intentional about things. We already have a London trip planned around a work trip I have, and a DC trip is strongly being considered.

We’ve also got lots of opps to get to Utah, Colorado, Chicago and Seattle as part of my regular travel schedule.

Get (really) serious about points and miles

I’ve participated in the points and miles “game” for many years but in a far less aggressive means than many who are quite serious about this. I would, of course, rack up my points and miles on my preferred travel providers and occasionally grab a sign up bonus for a new credit card (although this was rare).

In 2020 I intend to dive into this world a lot more. Partly because I’d like to write a little bit about here on our blog, but mostly because I think I am leaving opportunity on the table. I’ve already started by signing up for a few interesting credit cards that had big bonuses am stockpiling the points for our family’s trip to London in March.

How about you? How serious are you on collecting points and miles for your business travel or even daily / monthly spend? Do you plan on getting a little more serious in 2020?

Get Elite Status on your preferred airline (e.g. United 1K Status, or Southwest Preferred)

It’s one thing to to travel a lot, but it’s entirely different to travel in style. A Business Travel New Year’s resolution for me this year is to make sure that I get elite status on my preferred Airline (for me, this year, that’s United’s 1K).

In the past it’s meant Delta Platinum (before Diamond existed) and Southwest A-List Preferred.

How about you? What’s your elite status goal this year?

Get a nice travel perk using creative means (e.g. Southwest Companion Pass)

A fun goal for m this year is try to earn a creative travel perk using creative means. For example, earn the Southwest Companion Pass without flying that much (in other words, use the credit card strategy so often employed by folks).

Or maybe it’s buying / earning status with another travel provider through a credit card company. Yep, time to get creative both for the fun of it and well, who doesn’t like travel perks.

Travel a little lot healthier

I don’t think a New Year’s Resolution list would be complete if it didn’t mention something about health. We are no different here. 🙂

In 2020 we intend to focus on travel health a bit more. 2019 involved a lot of travel and we took our eye off the ball on working out while traveling. We are going to fix that this year.

Explore more

We are usually pretty good about this. In fact, we almost always make time to see the area we are visiting for work, but we kinda took our eye off the ball in the 4Q of 2019 and we didn’t like it. In 2020 we are going to be more intentional about getting out while we are on the road for work – even if it’s just checking out a local foodie spot or landmark.

Happy New Year!

There you have it. 10 New Years Resolutions for Business Travel. How about you? What are your business travel resolutions for 2020? Do you have any of the same ones I do? Anything we don’t have? We’d love to hear about your resolutions for 2020!

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3 comments

FF78 December 31, 2019 - 11:30 am

I have an alternate opinion on the following:
-Get (really) serious about points and miles
-Get Elite Status on your preferred airline (e.g. United 1K Status, or Southwest Preferred)

2019 was the year that hotels and airlines killed loyalty.
The devaluations and monopolistic pricing approaches should have you ALL OVER free agency in 2020.
So, for the first point, ride the programs like a borrowed mule. Use them in the spirit of the ‘travel rebate’ structure with which they’ve aligned. There is no loyalty.
To the 2nd point, ‘Getting’ Elite status isn’t worth the endless run on the hamster wheel. Go convenience and price, every time.

The C Boarding Group December 31, 2019 - 9:57 pm

Interesting perspective! You’ve given me something to really think about here.

Laura January 2, 2020 - 8:57 pm

It’s so hard to prioritise health when travelling/working, it’s definitely top of my list to work on in 2020!

10 New Years Resolutions for Business Travelers