If you travel abroad for work what do you do?

[JengaTower124]

Posting for traffic and because I’m genuinely curious!

I love traveling and would absolutely love a job that takes me abroad more often. Right now, I travel around the UK and Northern Ireland for work, but I’d love the chance to go further—like the USA or Asia, Europe.

If your job takes you to the USA or Europe regularly, what do you do? I’d love to hear about it!

And before anyone jumps in with "work trips aren’t holidays"—I know... I work hard, get everything done, and then make the most of whatever free time I have to explore before coming back home to my family.

You'll probably have to work for international corp. One friend works for Microsoft as a software engineer and regularly travels to the US, another works as a strategist for MoD and 60% of her work involves international travel.
They both hate the travelling aspect of their work, though.

Law. I travel much less since Covid though. I used to be on a plane every few weeks.

I work in travel, so unsurprisingly I travel! Europe in my case as the destinations I deal with are all in Europe.

Totally agree with seeing as much of the destination as possible outside of work. I once went to Barcelona (first time I'd been) for a day and a half of meetings. Finished at 1pm on the second day but wasn't flying home until the next day. I went straight out from the meeting to explore and didn't get back to the hotel until 1am. 12 hours on my feet soaking in as much of the city as I could manage.

My employer are keen on us building a bit of time off into a trip where possible as the more familiar we are with a destination we offer the better.

Nothing better then taking time out to expore!

I travel quite a bit for work, I'm a Civil Servant at the Department for Business and Trade in an internationally facing healthcare team. I'm really lucky that I've been able to travel to South America, the Far East and the Middle East. Other work colleagues regularly travel to the US and Europe!

Yes, it's not as glamorous as people think, but we do get downtime to explore. It's also really easy to add a few days annual leave and stay on to do personal exploring. I've been doing it for quite a few years now, so I'm less excited by the travelling as it can be exhausting. However, I feel incredibly lucky I've managed to visit some amazing places!

I also work in travel so spend a fair bit of time travelling around the UK and overseas for events, conferences and training trips.

I'm a business development manager for a tour operator and a large part of my role is representing my company at trade and consumer events. There's often not a huge amount of time for independent exploring but I try to build it in where I can. Training trips and fam trips however are fab, whilst it undoubtedly is work I get to experience some amazing things!

I do something similar job wise but from a finance healthcare prospective.

Might look for jobs in the travel industry

Civil Service international negotiations - some departments do more than others. business and Trade mentioned upthread

My husband travels lots. He's essentially a salesman. He sells parts for pieces of equipment used on ships/subs. If a country has ships or a dockyard that maintains ships, be it cargo, cruise military, etc, he travels there.

Not me, but DH has travelled all over the world working for the UK government.

@JengaTower124 it's a great industry to be in. Pay is low at entry level but there are lots of opportunities to move up quickly and it's an industry where moving around to increase salary isn't at all frowned upon - it's pretty dynamic in that respect.
Roles for people with similar experience from other industries do come up, we've just employed an overseas BDM from another industry because she's well travelled, a great communicator and very commercially focused.

I used to be a hair collector :)

I would regularly travel to Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and the Philippines.

One of the best jobs i ever had. Loved travelling esp. to SE Asia, Jetlag was a killer tho.

Also government, previously NGO work. Travel loads, lived overseas. Some of the world's less glamorous locations though!

medical Device sales reps that I have worked with seem to travel all over the place for meetings, training and conferences. It looks like a lot of work and a lot of play. Looks knackering though!

Dh does

But he barely gets a free time. It’s in and out as much as possible as he has a home life and family to get back to. Bar the odd hour here and there, there’s no whole free evenings or afternoons

IT program manager for a global company. Generally going to other offices in US and Europe to run workshops of various flavours. When I was a young un I once had to deliver system migrations across 6 European countries so was in a different country every week - mostly completely unglamorous but did once spend a week in a 5* hotel in Malta with the actual work only needing a day in the end. Fun times 😎

I used to travel to the US (from London) every 2 weeks out of 6. I was a Programme Manager in Financial Services and had IT teams working for me in NYC, Colorado and Texas. It was hard work and long hours but I loved it! My Colorado team I especially miss as they were great guys and I enjoyed every visit.

I used to be a "global head of ...." for a luxury car brand and would travel up to 6 months of the year.

I have seen a lot of Europe, the US, china, Tokyo (my absolute favourite) and Melbourne.

It was incredible and I feel very lucky.
Then I had my children and the appeal of being away so much wore off. Now we just plan to take them to the places mummy worked to see the cities and experience the places properly!

Oh and the Middle East! Dubai would probably never have been on my list but it's great to have experienced it!

It’s not very much fun when every.single.trip. is at the same office, in the ass end of nowhere, with nothing to explore/do.

For wigs? How did it work — did you have someone doing the ‘collecting’ on the ground?

For wigs and extensions, We had collectors who would drive out to the villages. I came in at the end to inspect quality and pay. I also oversaw the cleaning and packing for shipping.

You should train as cabin crew. My friend is one and she’s been everywhere. Love seeing her pictures on facebook of whichever random country she’s in today! Sometimes it’s only a night stopover, but other times she gets 2/3 days.

Get a job at an international company. I am a commercial lawyer working inhouse at a global company and travel semi regularly for work. I could travel more but have slowed down since having kids. My profession wouldn't normally be associated with work travel, but my company is.

I travel a lot for work - in fact I only do about 5% of my work from my home base, but I am self employed. I work in entertainment - technical support for bands, theatre and events so therefore have to travel with the artist and/or event. It’s great and I love it - pay is good and on most projects we get at least some time to see some of the places we go to and I’ve been to pretty much all of Europe, US, Canada, South America and China. Oz and Japan are on the list to get to though!

Not compatible with family life though so as I am thinking of starting a family within the next year or two I am looking for more full time opportunities closer to home. I do hope to get back to it at some point, at least part time as I really do love it (though that love has stopped me having a family so far as I worry I will regret the seismic changes to my life).