If you travel abroad for work: why, what, where?

[Twotwinpeaks]

I’m away on holiday at the moment abroad. I’ve never had a job requiring international travel and always find myself people watching at the airport. Lots of people are in work mode - suited, smartly dressed and on laptops. (I presume some of them are travelling to meetings, conferences, head offices, client networking.)

This is nothing but curiosity! It seems quite glam but I’m sure it gets tiresome and hard to be away from family. My questions are:

If you travel abroad for work, what sector or field are you in? What would be a typical ‘workday’ whilst abroad? Where do you tend to travel to generally (short haul/long haul) and finally do you enjoy it?

I hope it’s not too intrusive. I’m kind of in awe tbh 🫢

I've travelled for work for over 20 years. To begin with a mixture of training people and sales support, then meeting with engineering teams, conferences, KOL meetings, and still sales support.
A typical day could vary from getting up at 4am, drive to airport, short haul hop in europe, taxi to office/ customer, meetings with them, taxi back, flight, drive home very late back. Or fly to Oz, conference, customer visits over a week.
Its nowhere near as glam as people think, and nothing like being on holiday. I still have all my emails and documents to do, and online meetings to be at if possible so all my 'free' time isn't my own, and often very long days as I have to do dinners with customers which take a lot of work.
Med tech field

My company builds exhibition booths (amongst other things we do for our clients) so if I go abroad the first few days are really long days at the exhibition centre getting everyting set up and perfect. The build crew then go home and I stay on site to be on hand if the client needs us, make sure the booth is running smoothly etc. then I stay for a day to pack up some bits and leave the crew to dismantle the booth.
It sound glamourous going to places but in reality all we see is the airport, the exhibition hall, our hotel and some resturants in the evening for a quick meal

I don't because I am self-employed. In my first job out of uni I worked for a large American company and about 12 of us who had recently joined went out to the US for two weeks' training. Later on I worked for another American company and went a couple of times to their head office in Arizona for meetings.

DH works in the aviation sector and although he doesn't travel as much as he did pre-pandemic, the people who do similar roles in the countries bordering the north Atlantic get together a couple of times a year to discuss strategy. He's had trips to Canada and Iceland recently.

I work in the travel industry and have the occasional trip abroad to deliver training.

2019, I went to Cape Town and Mumbai, this year, I have been to Romania three times.

I’ve worked in different European countries for the past 10 years and have commuted for many years between London and wherever I’m working. Normally I fly out v early Monday and return v late Thursday night, working at home on Friday. The company pays for my travel and for an apartment in the town I live over there. Occasionally my husband flies over for the weekend and I get a break from the commute.
Once I’m away it’s just normal working, except I’m living on my own and can devote myself to work. I go out with colleagues occasionally, shop in the local supermarkets etc. Sometimes I drive or fly from there to other company sites, short and long-haul.
I’m back home at the weekend, going to Waitrose and doing the chores with my husband.
I wouldn’t say it’s glamorous, but it’s much more interesting than going into the same old local office everyday, like I did in my early career. And I love working with colleagues from all over the world.
I’m a senior HR director in a global role.

Financial services, we have offices in the UK, the USA and SE Asia. I train people - I go out to show new hires how to do several very specific processes. It's a brilliant gig, it's doing my usual job but living the high life when I'm not in the office. It never gets boring, I get excited booking the flights and hotel every time.

It's been asked why they don't have trainers outside of the UK, but I'm very much against that idea 🤔

Great thread OP!

I have often wondered this too, as I hear about these sorts of people but have never met one in real life.

It sounds like a dream!

I work in IT. I have been to about 10 European countries for work. Usually about 2-3 days at a time.

Not as regularly as I used to though. I am a single parent so it can be a nice break sometimes!

I work in advertising and we travel to shoot all the time. You’d probably think we were travelling on holiday though as you’d never catch any of us in a suit or anything close! It’s hard work and long days but usually with a bit of fun time built in somewhere as well if at all possible.

Although being a single parent means I am also not easily able to take a days leave and tag on an extra day for me with just the cost of the hotel!

I head a small ver specialist team who lead the field in what we do. So I have travelled all over the world to train or deliver presentations on what we do. It’s nice to go but as someone said once I’m there it’s work. I stay in a hotel, work long hours, occasionally go out with colleagues and fly back. I will say that if I get an afternoon or morning free then I will sightsee or explore. But I’m usually too knackered to!

Lawyer. We might go to interview a witness, or take part in a face-to-face negotiation, speak at a conference on legal issues in our sector, attend an overseas court hearing (usually in conjunction with local lawyers based where the case is taking place), or we have annual relationship review meetings with international clients which usually involve updating them on lots of cases at once followed by a nice meal out. Trips often combine multiple visits to a number of clients in the same part of the world.

Occasionally delivering training or team building with people in our own offices outside the UK, but less likely to be a business case for that these days.
Could be anywhere in the world.

I work in medical technology in a non-client facing role. I travel abroad several times a year for different reasons: audits, setting up new sites, troubleshooting, training, the odd conference and spending time with local partners in countries where face-to-face contact is culturally important.

My travel days look different depending on what I'm going for. If it's a short hop to another office in Europe then it's generally an early start at the airport, into a taxi, day in a meeting room/walking round a factory, then back to the hotel for dinner and a few hours catching up on my day-to-day work. If it's long-haul then I'm dressed for comfort (definitely not suited and booted) and I try to fly out on a Friday so I can sightsee at my own expense over the weekend before starting the work side on Monday.

It's rarely glamorous. Most of the places I visit are on bland industrial estates miles from anywhere interesting. Sometimes though it can be really fun, especially in the Far East where the people I'm visiting go out of their way to show me around. I went down the Great Wall of China on a toboggan earlier this year 😁and have been inside the pyramids in Giza, on safari in South Africa, zip lining in a rainforest in Singapore and on road trips through some very cool places.

I work in an international area of law. I've travelled all over on business -China, Singapore, Mauritius, the US and lots of places in Europe.

Tbh travelling on business gets old fairly quickly.

The downsides are:
-the work is usually very pressured and stressful
-jet lag is awful if you are not on holiday and cannot just snooze on a sunlouger when you need to
-the risk of colleagues seeing you drooling asleep on the plane
-packing and unpacking is dull
-working on the plane when you want to watch the in flight entertainment

The good bits are:
-if you have small children at home you get a night off!
-you don't have to cook
-airport lounges so you don't have to mix with the hoi polloi😄
-I bought pretty much all my toiletries from the naice airport shops.

I’m an academic, so I travel to archives to do research, conferences to present research or have meetings with various professional organisations and research networks (post-Covid, some online, some hybrid, some still in person), to examine doctoral theses, and on Erasmus teaching exchanges and/or to check in with students studying abroad at one of our partner institutions.

DH also travels a lot for work, and as we have a primary school aged child, it involves a lot of working around one another’s schedules.

My husband is in construction and travels every week. Typical travel day for him - up between 2-3am to travel to airport, travel + fly to various European or similar located places (normally 6 hour max but most frequently 2-3 hour flights), land, straight to site to work, work until 6-7pm, tea with his team or in the hotel, sleep, on site the next day by 7am ish, work, back to the airport for 6/7pm, flight home, home anywhere between 2-3am then up for work as normal. Sometimes does there and back flights in a day but that's very tiring! In October he was away for I think 12 days in total. Similar in November and Dec then ramping up in the new year!

He loves the travel because he'd get bored sat in an office all day, but it's really really tiring and he's always jealous of the people at the airports off on their holidays when he's off to work. He has always got a suitcase of clothes somewhere needing unpacking too 😂

I work in finance and I travel for work too, but my days are normally there and back in one day and only to close European countries. For me it's up 2-3am, travel to the airport, short flight, taxi to the offices, work and attended meetings with a lunch trip thrown in, more meetings, back to the airport and fly home. Again home late or early the next morning! Mines much less frequent, once or twice a year rather than weekly.

I travel at least once per year from the Caribbean to Europe, mostly London due to attending shows in my sector. Am a legal specialist in an online sector.

Pro is that I often combine it with shopping items that I cannot find in my home country, visiting family as well for a few days.

Downside, we need to organize well at home and hardly any time for you, very long days as everything goes on as usual.

So whilst my clients were all UK based collagues had international customers.

However the company (think big FTSE) decided to demand that people didnt travel anything other than Economy (of course the Directors did something completely different!) I dont work there now but to ask a employye to sit on a Economy seat for 11 plus hours and allow them to fly out a day early to adjust was disgusting! Often the day early was Sat or Sun...

There was a rule previously that anything over 8 hours could be Biz Class but that was scrapped.

It was truly horrendous for the people that had to travel but had no choice but to fly Economy.

I have a global corporate role and travel to see my teams in other countries / attend meetings etc. It's much as others have said - early starts, long days, double your day's work with timezone differences / emails / presentations, loneliness missing my home and family, often unhealthy food and soulless hotel rooms (even fancy hotels aren't the same as being at home) - in short, not glamorous to be a frequent traveller IMHO!

I don't but my dd does. She works in marketing for a company who's head office is abroad, so she goes there for team meetings/launches/events. Usually at the head office but sometimes they all go somewhere else in Europe for the launch events.

My husband works in motor racing so he travels extensively the only thing he sees nowadays are glimpses as he travels between the airport, the hotel and the circuit. Previously he worked on long distance races so there are many places he has passed at high speed.
Lots of same stuff different countries.

I used to travel a lot - I worked for a North American charitable foundation for a European cause (Sort of like "American Friends of the National Trust") and used to fly back and forth to the UK once a quarter, as well as travelling all over the US and Canada.

DH works for a megabank doing client relations, so he's always flying off to see clients and prospective clients. He's also always being packed off to conferences to network.

It can be both very glam, and really horrible - we've both been on trips where you've done a long-haul flight, stayed in the city for 24 hours and then had to leave again and that sucks. I remember just crying with sheer exhaustion in San Francisco airport a few years back because I was in the middle of doing BOS - NYC - SF - DC - NYC in a very short space of time.

Not now, but until a couple of years ago. Project Manager, US company. Financial, HR & IT projects. Travelled to US extensively, mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, India, Singapore, Philippines.
Lived in some for a while.
Most travel to meet up with teams , obtain funding etc…
Loved it mostly but am healthier now I don’t live in hotels and sit on planes.

I travel for work, mainly asia. I‘m a ux researcher.
Days are looooong. Airport, hotel, work 12-16 hour days, and repeat.
Work days are in research venues, so no choice in food either - i eat what’s available (you can’t be picky - if you’re picky, you’ll go hungry).
Usually 10-12 hours in research venue, 4-6 hours to catch up with my other work in hotel room.
Its horrible

What is UX in this context? I only know it as an abbreviation for “user experience” in software development.