Before you book
A few checks at the start prevent the most expensive problems later.
- Passport validity: many countries require a passport valid for a period beyond your stay, and some require blank pages. Check the entry requirements for your destination on the U.S. State Department's travel site.
- Visas and entry authorizations: check whether you need one and how long it takes.
- Travel advisories for your destination.
- Your company's travel policy, if one applies: booking channels, classes, hotel limits and approvals.
- Meeting times confirmed, so flights are booked around fixed commitments rather than the other way round.
Booking flights, hotels and ground transport
Decide your preferences once and write them down. They turn every future booking into a quick check rather than a research project.
- Flights
- Preferred airlines and alliances, seat preference, latest acceptable arrival, buffer before first meeting, loyalty numbers.
- Hotel
- Distance to meetings, quiet room, gym, breakfast hours, late checkout if your flight is in the evening.
- Ground transport
- Airport transfer booked or a plan for taxis and rideshare, and time between meetings if you're crossing a city.
- Flexibility
- Whether to pay for changeable fares. For trips with uncertain meetings, it often costs less than a change.
The week before you go
Most trip stress comes from things that are easy to sort a few days ahead.
- One itinerary with every flight, hotel, transfer and meeting, including addresses and confirmation numbers, available offline.
- Check-in reminders and seat confirmations.
- Dinner reservations for any client or team meals.
- Phone and data: roaming plan or local eSIM for international trips.
- Prescriptions and any health needs for the length of the trip, plus a plan for training.
- Out-of-office settings and handovers at work.
What to arrange at home
The home side of a trip is easy to overlook, and it's what often makes travel stressful for the people you leave behind. Before you go, think through childcare or pet care, deliveries that need someone in, bills or appointments that fall due while you're away, plants and security, and a plan for anything that might go wrong.
While you're away
Keep everything in one place you can check quickly, and decide in advance who handles changes. Flight delays, meeting reschedules and hotel problems are much less disruptive when someone else is rebooking while you get on with your day.
A sample travel preferences profile
Writing your preferences down once turns every future trip into a quick review. Here is an illustrative profile you can adapt. Whoever books for you, including yourself, should work from it.
- Flights
- Aisle seat, morning departures, no connections under 75 minutes, arrive the evening before any meeting before 10 a.m.
- Hotels
- Within 15 minutes' walk of the main meeting, gym on site, high floor away from the elevator, late checkout requested.
- Ground transport
- Car booked from the airport after long-haul flights; rideshare otherwise.
- Food
- Vegetarian options at any group dinner; breakfast in the room on early days.
- At home
- Dog walker booked for every night away; plants watered on trips longer than five days.
When to hand travel planning over
If you travel a few times a year, this checklist and a list of preferences may be all you need. If you travel often, the planning and the inevitable changes add up to hours a month, and they tend to fall on evenings and weekends.
Delegating makes sense when trips are frequent, when they combine work and personal plans, or when home logistics are part of the picture. SuperHandled is not a travel agency or a 24/7 travel desk. Your Personal Concierge plans and books flights, hotels, transfers and reservations the way you like them, with your approval for anything that costs money, and coordinates what needs to happen at home.