Tips for the Insanely Busy Traveler

I have been trav­el­ing quite heav­ily the past few months. And pack­ing has always been a prob­lem for me. Well that, and the fact that I’d get aller­gies because of the pres­sure on the plane and the change in weather. I remem­ber, it was quite warm in Jakarta when I was there about a month ago, and it was rain­ing Ondoy when I arrived in Manila. I got so sick after­wards I lost around three days just recovering.

Here are some tips on what to do dur­ing those long (or short) trips.

1. Travel way light. This is the one key thing you can do to guar­an­tee eas­ier pas­sage through secu­rity, tight con­nec­tions, ter­mi­nal shut­downs, back­track­ing planes, and other seri­ous and mun­dane haz­ards of post– 9/11 travel. It’s also the best way to avoid the many bag­gage fees that the air­lines are now heap­ing on trav­el­ers who dare to bring more than a carry-on.

If you are stay­ing at a major chain hotel that will offer com­pli­men­tary toi­letries — use them! Don’t bring your own 24-ounce sham­poo and con­di­tioner bot­tles to the hotel and then stuff the hotel ones in your suit­case to take home. If you don’t use them on the road, you’ll prob­a­bly never use them at home.

There are lots of prod­ucts that have mul­ti­ple uses. Opt for a shampoo/conditioner combo. Bring a tinted mois­tur­izer with SPF. Let your mois­tur­iz­ing body wash dou­ble as a shav­ing cream. Share your sham­poo, soap or tooth­paste with your trav­el­ing part­ner. Buy a make-up com­pact that con­tains more than one color, such as an eye­shadow quad.

Lose the bulky con­tain­ers. Instead, try zip-top bags. We stuff and pour every­thing we can into them, includ­ing hair prod­ucts, lotions, cot­ton balls and even sun­screen. (Note: Do not put large liquid-filled zip-top bags in your carry-on lug­gage; accord­ing to TSA reg­u­la­tions, liquid-filled con­tain­ers may be no larger than 3.4 ounces by vol­ume.) To pre­vent spills, put all of your liquid-filled bag­gies in a large plas­tic gro­cery bag — and be sure not to pack it next to any fish­ing rods or freshly sharp­ened pencils.

If you must bring your fancy jew­elry, keep it in the hotel safe except for spe­cial occa­sions such as din­ner in a nice restau­rant — and be sure it’s cov­ered by appro­pri­ate insur­ance. Most home­own­ers’ poli­cies will not cover jew­elry if it’s lost or stolen while trav­el­ing, so you may need to pur­chase a sep­a­rate policy.

Pack any valu­ables you buy while on your trip (and any of your own that you decide to bring) in your carry-on. As you’re prob­a­bly aware, checked bags can some­times dis­ap­pear into the black hole of lost air­line luggage.

If you’re going on, say, a seven-day trip, spend a week before you leave keep­ing track of every­thing you wear. Make a list, or, if you learn bet­ter with visual aids, keep these items together in a laun­dry bas­ket. Then fig­ure out which items you can do without.

Bring clothes in neu­tral col­ors that you can mix and match, and only pack shoes that can be worn with mul­ti­ple outfits.

Check the weather at your des­ti­na­tion before you leave and pack accord­ingly. If the weather devi­ates sig­nif­i­cantly from the fore­cast, you can always buy a sweater or rain pon­cho and keep it as a souvenir.

Many travel sup­ply com­pa­nies sell small pack­ets of laun­dry deter­gent (you can also find these at a laun­dro­mat). It only takes a few min­utes to wash your clothes in your hotel sink and hang them on a hanger to dry. When you wake up the next morn­ing … hello freshly washed clothes!

If you are a travel gad­get addict, rotate your col­lec­tion. Pick one or two that you just have to have and save the oth­ers for a future trip.

Keep in mind that some gad­gets may call for more room in your lug­gage than you’d expect; to keep them run­ning, you may need to pack things like spare bat­ter­ies, charg­ers, or elec­tri­cal adapters and con­vert­ers (for over­seas travel).

Remem­ber that if you decide to buy a lot of your items abroad, you will have to cre­ate room in your suit­case to cart them back home. Buy sample-sized items if you can to save space and money.

Instead of bring­ing a vir­tual library of read­ing mate­r­ial with you, buy mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers at the air­port. Pick­ing out what you want to read will give you some­thing to do as you wait, and you can recy­cle the items (or give them to a fel­low trav­eler) so you don’t have to lug them back with you.

2. Dress for suc­cess at secu­rity. Your favorite trav­el­ing clothes and acces­sories could cause slow­downs at secu­rity. Leave the jew­elry at home, remove your pierc­ings (if pos­si­ble) and wear cloth­ing that won’t hold you up in the secu­rity line – like slip-on shoes, belts with plas­tic buck­les instead of metal, and sim­ple cloth­ing that doesn’t require elab­o­rate searching.

3. Expect delays. A truly busy per­son has learned how to move projects around, make doctor’s appoint­ments from the train plat­form, walk the dog while the coffee’s brew­ing. If you’re this kind of per­son, you’re prob­a­bly only truly put out if you can’t get any­thing done at all. Thus, some trav­el­ing items to help you cope with those all-too-frequent delays at the airport:

Pro­gram the phone num­bers of your air­line, car rental com­pany, shut­tle ser­vice and hotel into your cell phone. If you’ve got time to kill dur­ing a flight delay, you can make a few calls and pro­vide your new ETA to any­one wait­ing for you at your des­ti­na­tion. (For even more effi­ciency, check to see which other air­lines also fly your itin­er­ary and pro­gram their phone num­bers in as well – that way if your orig­i­nal flight is delayed, you can start call­ing around for alternatives.)

Have a to-do list of pro­duc­tive things you can work on dur­ing delays. This might be a good time to read that chap­ter in your guide­book on the his­tory of the place you’re vis­it­ing, or to sketch out a detailed itin­er­ary for the first few days of your trip.

4. Have other folks do some of the work. Some exam­ples: Ask the front desk at the hotel to call you a cab, make a din­ner reser­va­tion, or orga­nize a tour or day trip. Book your air­fare, hotel and car rental at a sin­gle Web site — or, if you don’t mind a lit­tle less cus­tomiza­tion, book an orga­nized vaca­tion pack­age that includes accom­mo­da­tions, trans­porta­tion, meals and sightseeing.

5. Use a travel agent. Fol­low­ing on from the pre­vi­ous tip, why not leave all the heavy lift­ing to some­one else? Invest­ing some time in find­ing a travel agent you can trust and com­mu­ni­cate with will save you time (and maybe some money) in the long haul. Con­sider the dif­fer­ence between scour­ing count­less Web sites for the best deal and itin­er­ary, then mak­ing a pur­chase, then putting together your own travel itin­er­ary ver­sus plac­ing one phone call or e-mail to your travel agent – this could add up to hours of your life on every trip.

6. Ask for seats near the front of the plane. You’ll get on last, grant­ing you time to get more things done before board­ing lock­down, and you’ll get off first. Many air­lines now allow you to select your seat online at the time of book­ing or check-in (some­times for a fee) – this is the best way to guar­an­tee your­self the seat you want.

7. Know where the air­port gas sta­tion is. If you are respon­si­ble for return­ing your rental car with a full tank of gas, ask where the clos­est gas sta­tion is when you rent your car. This way you won’t be dri­ving around look­ing and hop­ing for a gas sta­tion to fill your tank just before returning.

8. Reuse your pack­ing list. If you’re the type of trav­eler that scrib­bles down a hasty pack­ing list before every trip (and inevitably for­gets some vital item each time), get orga­nized by cre­at­ing a sin­gle com­pre­hen­sive pack­ing list and sav­ing it on your com­puter. Before each trip, cus­tomize the list as nec­es­sary and then print out a copy to refer to as you pack.

9. Use these time-tested tac­tics:

1. Fly direct. Con­nec­tions cost time; missed con­nec­tions cost lots of time. Avoid lay­overs where you can.
2. Fly early in the day; there are fewer delays, can­cel­la­tions and peo­ple in the airport.
3. Con­sider alter­nate air­ports. They’re less crowded and often bet­ter located, and they have fewer flights going in and out – all com­mon sources of delays.