Business trips can often take place at the last minute. Something crops up that just absolutely has to be sorted out face to face. Which means if your job could potentially involve business travel, it's essential to be prepare as much as possible in advance.

In general, all travel trips are being booked later and later, so unless there's a major conference going on in your destination city, you should be able to find somewhere to stay. What can be more difficult to ensure is that it's somewhere you want to stay and that it's within your budget.

If you know your job is likely to involve travel, it's worth planning ahead and setting up a new folder in your bookmarks so that you're not hunting around the search engines, desperately trying to find your preferred airlines and hotel bookers.

Start your search while you're not rushed!

Make sure that you bookmark at least two of everything, in case the site you use doesn't have anything available for your trip.

For flights, choose one of the sites that lists lots of different airlines. But remember that these don't always list the budget airlines, so bookmark the web site of any budget airline that flies from your local airport.

When choosing flights, make sure that you check the number of stopovers. This is easily missed when you are traveling at the last minute. Stopovers can add hours to a flight time and they increase the likelihood of delays on your journey.

Taxi journeys from the airport to your final destination should be straightforward. But take the precaution of checking the likely fare before accepting the ride, even if the cab has a meter to display the price. It's not unheard of for taxi drivers to take a longer route than necessary if they perceive that you aren't local to their city.

If it's close enough to travel by car, driving will be your best option. Again, bookmark your favorite route planning site so that you can call on it at short notice. If you haven't used a route planning service before, test it out by entering a journey you do regularly to see how good the directions are. Not all online route planners are created equal!

When you reach your destination, you will probably need to get hotel accommodation booked.

For peace of mind, it's worth booking before you set off for your trip. Some hotels will offer an online booking service but you need to be aware that these services don't always show all the rooms available, especially at the last minute. If you can't get your chosen room online, remember that you can always use the telephone - we're so used to doing everything online nowadays that we can sometimes forget this!

Because web sites prefer you to book using their online system, you may need to have a directory enquiries number to hand so that you can find out the hotel's contact details. If they're fully booked when you call, most hotel receptionists will be able to recommend somewhere else to stay.

Also make yourself a "pre-travel" check list ahead of time. This should include things like flight, car rental and hotel reservations as well as the usual things you would pack for any trip.

Copyright 2005 Smooth Hound