Mixing business with family pleasure on trips

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, some travellers are using one trip to fulfil multiple needs.

According to a 2008 study by Egencia, the corporate travel arm of Expedia, 59 per cent of business travellers 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 Massachusetts, combines business travel with family time whenever he can.

He has taken his wife to Sweden and his daughter to Disney World.

One year Mr 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 travelling away from my family,” said Mr. Palmer, who lives in New Castle, “so having any of them with me is a million percent better.”

Last spring Mr 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,” Mrs. Palmer said.

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.”

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 travellers advise checking with a manager.

Different objectives

Firms 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.

Mixing business and personal travel requires an extra level of planning and coordination.

As travellers try to fulfil 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 travellers 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.