By JULIE WEED
c.2010 New York Times News Service
How can a family preserve time together that normally would be consumed by work, and even turn it into an adventure and save money? They can combine a family vacation with a parent's business trip.
With budget restrictions in place in many homes and businesses across the country, some travelers are using one trip to fulfill multiple needs. According to a 2008 study by Egencia, the corporate travel arm of Expedia, 59 percent of business travelers have had friends or family join them on a trip so they could spend free time together.
Andy Palmer, a co-founder of Vertica Systems and global head of software engineering at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., combines business travel with family time whenever he can. He has taken his wife to Sweden and his daughter to Disney World. One year Palmer took his son out of sixth grade for 10 days so he could take him on a business trip to Idaho and Utah. They also found some time for fly-fishing.
"I hate traveling away from my family," said Palmer, who lives in New Castle, N.H., "so having any of them with me is a million percent better."
Last spring Palmer's wife, Amy, and their four children accompanied him to Basel, Switzerland, when he had work to do at the Novartis headquarters. His family "ate and toured" while he worked during the day, and they all regrouped to dine together in the evening. The children appreciated seeing where their father had to go so frequently. "He wasn't calling from a black hole after that - they could imagine the setting where he was," Amy Palmer said.
Lois Howes, who works at Superior Travel, in Freeport, N.Y., said she had seen an increase in travelers combining work and vacation, and often made those arrangements for her clients. Recently she helped three different sets of travelers - going to Istanbul, Seattle and Savannah, Ga. - extend their work trips for some sightseeing.
"I had a couple of married teachers from New York going to a convention in Seattle this summer and I booked them on an Alaska cruise," she said. "If their work hadn't paid for their airfare to get out west, they couldn't have afforded it."
Tacking personal time onto a work trip is a way to visit a place you wouldn't have seen otherwise, and to share that experience with your family, she added.
When Mary Sorensen of Seattle realized that her husband, Stan, would be taking a business trip to Paris at the same time that their children were on spring break, she sprang into action and rented an apartment there for 10 days. "We took the opportunity to transport our life to France," she said, "Every day we fixed Dad breakfast in the morning and sent him to work."
After breakfast, Sorensen and her sons, age 11 and 9, would hop on the metro and explore the city. Along with visits to the Louvre and Notre Dame, they shopped at the local food market, hung their laundry out to dry and visited a bakery every day to practice their French phrases with the owner. "The boys had a wonderful taste of what it was like to live in another city," she said.
Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of bringing family along on a trip, perhaps fearing that their supervisor will think they are slacking off. Experienced business travelers advise checking with a manager. Companies are generally fine with the idea if employees don't charge any family expenses to their employer, and can meet all the professional requirements of the trip. And extending the trip over a Saturday night may even decrease the airfare the company is paying.
In the Sorensens' case, Sorensen's company paid for his plane tickets and all his meals, and offered a per diem rate for lodging which the family put toward the apartment rental.
Mixing business and personal travel requires an extra level of planning and coordination. When Palmer took his daughter Morgan on a trip to Disney World in Florida, he had to make sure his aunt, who lived in Orlando, could care for her while he worked during the day. A few years later, Morgan accompanied him on trips to Madison, Wis.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Washington so she could visit colleges. Palmer scheduled his meetings around the campus tour times.
As travelers try to fulfill different objectives, however, tensions can rear up. The parent who is there on the job may need to entertain clients in the evening, or catch up on e-mail after a day spent in meetings, but the family may be eager to go out. Expectations should be set before departure, including each day's business obligations as well as when there will be time for recreation and family time.
To reduce the stress, business travelers say they try to separate their activities as much as possible. They don't make businesses calls from museum galleries. They chat with their children while standing in line at a theme park instead of texting their colleagues. Or they have their families join them at the tail end of the trip and extend their time at the destination for a few more days.
Even when they aren't away on business, the line between work and family often blurs, Amy Palmer said, pointing out how many people work on the computer at home instead of playing with their children. "This helps us claim some of that time back," she said.