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 🫢

Ux is user experience, but its much broader just software. I work on small electronic devices, with and without screens.

I haven’t done it for a while, but I work in product development and used to go to Hong Kong / China for 2 weeks once or twice a year.

A typical day would be up at 7, breakfast with a colleague, car pick up at 8.30 . Arrive at the factory at 10 and into a meeting room. Work through all day with different teams of engineers checking fixes to software bugs, packaging changes, plastics . Finish at 6 back to hotel. Eat with colleague. Log on at about 9 and work through until midnight or later. Five days a week. Saturday and Sunday morning off. Sunday prepare for the week ahead.

Upsides : Generally nice hotel , see new places, airmiles
Downsides : No time off in lieu, factory food, long days and big decisions all by yourself.

These have been so insightful! Thanks for sharing the ups and downs.

I’m currently unemployed but usually work in the finance (insurance) sector, when I used to travel it was typically the US, Germany or Singapore. My husband works in the same industry and will travel for around six weeks of the year in small chunks, he was in Singapore recently, most of his travel will either be Singapore or the US.

I'm in sales for a cycling brand. I go out to Asia to meet factories and to Europe for trade shows. I definitely don't wear a suit though! It's a very casual industry.

I work for a university. My remit is Switzerland so travel to Zürich and Geneva mostly. Off to Lux in a couple of weeks. 121 meetings with dinners etc. love it but getting up at the crack of Dawn for an early flight is a killer.

DH was a scientific journalist and went to conferences all over the world. I worked in academia and went to conferences in the US, Europe and the Far East. I was also lucky enough to be asked to work in China for a few weeks. Sometimes we were able to accompany each other and on those occasions would try to add on some days vacation.

I have lived in Europe for over 30 years. When I was an employee I sometimes had to travel to the UK or the Netherlands.
Since going freelance it has varied between working where I live or within the country and commuting, usually on a weekly or fortnightly basis to Luxembourg, Dublin or Zuerich.
Lux was easy as it is only 90 minutes by car from my house. Dublin was fine as it was a flight on a Sunday afternoon and back 10 days or so later on the Friday (except that the flights were always late). Zuerich was fine, too. I did drive a few times, but mostly got a Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning flight.
To be honest, you get into a routine and getting a flight is much like catching a bus - and about as exciting!
I did have a stint in Hanover, where I started going up by train on Monday mornings (05:30) which was fine, but the Friday afternoon train was always 1 hour late, so I swapped to flying again after a while, which was probably insane, but less stressful and good for the airmiles :-)
I work in IT in the financial sector either as a BA or PM.

I travelled when my kids were young and it was so so hard being away from them. It’s not very glamorous- one Marriott is much like another, but you do get the benefit (often) of locals taking you out so you see a side of the city you wouldn’t as a tourist.

I’d quite enjoy it now my kids are older

I did it for quite a few years, and loved it. I’m an engineer. Work generally involved meetings, gathering data and writing reports, running training, and giving presentations.

Sometimes day meetings in Europe, so using time in the plane for last minute meeting prep, running a meeting, doing the write up on the way home. More frequently a hotel stay, even in Europe.

Often I’d do a week in a city, so would take the opportunity to stay on the weekends either side so I could see the sights. I could choose either a hotel, or an Airbnb (and cater for myself). I love food shopping in other countries.

In the US we would occasionally ditch the internal flights and do a road trip. In Europe I’d sometimes do the whole trip by train.

Some were longer trips - three months in one Far Eastern city. In contrast, I did three days in Hong Kong, getting straight off a long haul flight to do a 15 hour day of meetings without even going to the hotel first.

My children were all quite young when I was doing long stints away. My partner does similar work, so we had to make sure one of us was always home.

I always made time for exploring. Long haul flights were always business class. Hotels were variable for short stays, but if I was away for a long time I’d make sure they were good.

Lots of up sides. Not many down sides, apart from turning up at one company for a job and finding them very displeased that I was female; they had been expecting a man.

I'm a writer (mainly books, but also plays), so I travel a lot for book tours, research trips, endless fucking meetings, and rehearsals and performances.

Travel in the UK is usually fairly grim. I'm usually in a Premier Inn somewhere like Leicester or Wolverhampton. No one in this country has any money so there's always pressure to do meetings or events as day trips and train up and down in the same day, even if it's somewhere like Edinburgh. I always put my foot down and say if it's more than 5 hours travelling, I won't do it as a day trip.

Meetings abroad are weird and exhausting and peak "this should have been a Zoom." It's only really people in LA who want to fly you in for a meeting that lasts half an hour. I don't personally do that, but my best friend who is a much more successful writer than me has flown to NY or to LA just for a night (or even sometimes just for a single day, without staying overnight) quite a few times, which I think is just madness. Like fly from London to LA, go from airport to studio, have meeting or attend event, car back to LAX, fly home. Madness!

Travel abroad for book stuff is really fun since everyone is very nice to you and excited to meet you, and you have a lot of free time to explore. On the flipside, travelling to a new city every day and moving hotels every day is really exhausting, since you don't ever get to unpack or really settle anywhere. But it is fun - I'm spending all of November and December in the sunshine which is pretty brilliant.

IT. Not in sales or management or anything, just a techie. I travel all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa (well, just South Africa really) working on customer site, and occasional visits to our offices in the US and Europe for training. But mostly I'm going to work on customer site, either solo or as part of a small team.

The amount of travel has reduced MASSIVELY since COVID. In 2019 I flew 50 flight legs, this year I only flew 14 so far. This is because our customers have finally realised what we have been telling them for years, that we can work fine over VPNs and they save on expensive flights and hotels. BA have extended my frequent flyer status every year, clearly in desperation that I will start flying regularly again - sorry, not gonna happen.

I'm usually only away for 4 days, 5 max. I ALWAYS come home for the weekend, even from South Africa and I only ever fly on a Sunday evening if it's long haul - it's not a negotiable. When I was earlier in my career I would often be on customer site for several months at a time (coming home every weekend) but now I typically only might go for one week per month on longer term projects to help out more junior project team members.

It's not glamorous. Getting to Heathrow for 04:30 every Monday morning for weeks on end sucks. Yes, you get lounge access but the lounge it's packed in the morning - although I will admit it's nice to get to the airport early and chill out with a glass of wine or two on the homeward leg. Some customer locations are great, sometimes you will be stuck on an industrial estate 20km outside Kielce in February. It's not good for your health unless you are super disciplined and make sure you book a hotel with a good gym or safe places to run nearby and don't get tempted to eat crap and drink every night.

It needs a super-supportive partner and understanding family and it messes with your weekends as all the little jobs you would have done during the week have to be crammed into the weekend.

The pluses: sometimes you get a great project somewhere lovely. Spain and Italy are great obviously, but I would have never developed such a love for the Nordic countries, Germany, and Belgium (yes Belgium!) without being having worked there. Or such a deep loathing for Dubai. I love working on projects with our local teams, meeting up with colleagues who I normally only ever see on a webex is brilliant. Most of our customers are lovely and it's great to work in industries and sectors that I would usually never have any interaction with (or even knew existed!)

I worked for a company with head offices in Germany. So I used to go there for meetings, training etc. But we had offices all over the world and part of my remit was to manage teams based in a few european countries, so I was forever travelling to see/spend time with them.

Travelling to another country for a day is exhausting. I often used to get the 7am flight, then 2 trains to the office, a few hrs in the office then repeat the journey on the way home.
For offices when there weren't several flight options a day it's a question of flying out one day and back the next. Offices aren't often in the 'best' parts of cities, so you don't see much of the city you're in.

Occasionally, I used to tag on a visit for my own purposes. Or spend an evening in the city with colleagues. But that was a rarity.

I'm glad I don't have to do it any more!

Interesting to see some people are allowed to tag on days. That wasn’t allowed in any of the companies i’ve ever worked to discourage people from going onto unnecessary trips.
So its overnight/early morning flight, work until last minute, earlier flight back. Nobody travels if not absolutely necessary.

I'm in Johannesburg for work right now, on Mumsnet either my toes in the hotel pool. That's the upside! Downside was fu crooning at work yesterday after zero sleep on a night flight and trying to fit value into every minute I'm here.

I do love the experience though and through work have been to places, met people and seen things I never would in a million years.

I'm a scientist and travel a lot for conferences, meetings and longer collaboration stints. I used to move institution every year so was doing long distance commuting too. I never really minded it, but I hate going through airports on holiday now and rarely travel more than 2h for a holiday anymore because it feels too much like work. All the novelty of airports wore off long ago.

Nope, I am trying and trying and I can’t work out what “fu crooning” is a typo for! Unless it is not a typo and you mean you sang “Fuck you” to somebody??!

Fair. Maybe that's how I sound after a night flight in economy??!

I work in the arts & travel a lot which i absolutely love. I don't wear suits so you would probably assume I was on hols if you saw me at the airport

This year I've been on 11 trips with 1 more to go. They vary from going to conferences/ symposia to studio visits with artists to planning meetings for projects.

I feel immensely privileged because I get to spend my time having super interesting conversations with talented, intelligent, interesting people & I get to visit cool places -studios, galleries, universities & museums wherever i go.

Doctor. Travel for conferences, usually Europe although some colleagues have been to the US or Canada. Usually not suited and trying not to let on that I'm frantically trying to stay on top of my NHS emails!

I'm in Business Development and spend a week a month on average in the US seeing clients/ prospective clients and attending conferences and occasional travel to Europe.
I love it but it can be tiring.

Son working in Vancouver and his London colleagues travel too Vancouver every few weeks.

For a two week stint in Asia I get a Thursday flight, arrive Friday, spend the weekend acclimatising and into the office on Monday. Flight back on Friday night, home on Saturday and back to work on Tuesday.

@LubaLuca i fly on sunday, arrive monday morning, directly to office. back friday late night/early sat morning (arrive back saturday ). back to work on monday.
Not fun (business class flights and nice hotels though, but still not fun)

I’m an academic and used to travel to conferences to present research or sometimes for data collection. There is very little funding now for conference travel unless you are very senior and also a lot is online now. I can’t remember the last time I traveled for work, beyond, say, getting the train to Bristol.