Reconciling business travel with personal life, an unfinished business

The reconciliation of work and family is the main difficulty faced by 66.7% of travelers participating in a study conducted by Captio. A third of business travelers believe that better management of travel-related paperwork will help reduce stress.

According to the survey, in which more than 200 travelers participated, 54% of Spanish professionals say that business travel affects their personal lives “quite a lot” and nearly 7% say it even affects them “a lot”.

The main reason affecting the personal lives of business travelers is the difficulty in conciliating work and family (66.3%). Next on the list of reasons given are problems in following healthy lifestyle patterns (48.4%) and tiredness and health problems (36.3%).

In addition, the Captio report notes that the older you get, the greater the sense of personal distress. In fact, young people between the ages of 18 and 25 are the least likely to feel that business travel affects their personal lives (37.5%). However, 58.2% of professionals between 36 and 45 years old say that it has a significant impact.

In the comparison by gender, women complain more than men about the lack of work-life balance, with 60.3% compared to 51.1%.

But it's not all negative comments. The professionals consulted also point out the advantages of business travel. What they like most is discovering new places (57.1%), followed by professional development opportunities (54.4%), having direct contact with customers and suppliers (54%) and doing networking (49.2%).

In contrast, losing time during travel (68%), spending time away from home (48.1%) and the inability to take advantage of the trip for sightseeing (41.8%) are the most disliked factors of business travel.

STRÉS

The first Captio Business Travel Personal Affect Report notes that women show a higher perception of travel-related stress. Specifically, 46% of men reported not feeling stressed, while in the group of women this response drops to 33%.

The most frequent stress factors have to do with the variability that travel entails, the constant attention to calls and e-mails or the fact of combining the tasks of travel with the usual tasks at the office.

A revealing finding of the survey is that 35.6% of business travelers believe that better management of travel-related paperwork will help reduce the stress involved. In addition, one in three professionals confesses that they would like to travel less, i.e. reduce the length of trips or make them less frequent.