travel Archives - Appointment - Online Appointment Scheduling Software

How to Find the Best Deals When Booking Your Next Trip

By Abby Miller | Knowledge Base | No Comments

For some people, the worst part of their vacation is planning the details. But this is where you can get the most for your money and ensure you book as much fun as you can pack into your trip.

Good planning is the key. You can avoid the stress of overpaying for flights, finding the best hotel for the best price, and reserving the top restaurants. All you have to do is make good plans and stick to them. It’s not just about the money, it’s also about having fun.

If you are one of those people who hate to plan, think of these tricks as a way to really save money. Keep large blocks of time on your schedule open to be spontaneous. But try these ideas on how you can use your favorite online calendar to plan your vacation and save money.

Sign Up for Airline Discount Alerts

Once you identify where you’re traveling on your next vacation, sign up on travel and airline sites for alerts about discounts. These alerts typically offer discounts to travel during a specific time frame. Log these into your online calendar, along with the deadline to book, to make sure you don’t miss out. You can compare prices offered by different discount travel sites and plan your trip.

Use Travel Points Earned From Airlines

You may be a frequent flyer who has accumulated a number of travel miles. These miles typically do not last forever, so check out when they expire. You can enter the time period these travel miles are valid for in your online calendar. Look for dates that overlap with the flight discounts you identify and consider getting the most out of your travel miles. You can book a discounted flight, use travel miles to pay, and save money in both cases. It’s more savings than you would earn by just shopping around.

Plan Early If You Are Renting a Car

The price of renting a car has skyrocketed since the pandemic, thanks to rental car companies selling off a lot of their fleet. But that does not mean you can find bargains. Sign up for alerts from the rental car companies you trust most and add an alert to travel sites you use. Rental car discounts often come for certain travel periods, much like flights. Log these discount offers into your online schedule, along with their expiration date, so you don’t miss out.

Shop Early For Hotels, Airbnb Rentals

You may be able to save money on hotels by signing up for discount alerts on travel sites and your favorite hotel chains. Some hotels offer five nights for the price of four, or similar deals if you book between certain dates. Keep track of these as you do your flights, rental cars, and other discounts on your online calendar. Give each type of discount – flight, rental car, hotel – its own color code as you enter them into dates, and keep an eye out for the overlapping dates. This will help you plan your actual travel dates when you nail down the discounts.

Schedule Dinner Reservations In Advance

It may not seem necessary, but many restaurants at vacation spots fill up fast. You could find yourself forced to dine at more expensive, less appetizing, or mostly uninteresting restaurants. Take into account reservation options at the restaurants you most want to visit and reserve them as early as possible. For example, some popular restaurants at resort destinations fill up fast as your travel dates near or require you to book reservations a month or more in advance.

Check out their reservation requirements and plan your trip accordingly. Your effort to make plans with your online calendar might just be the difference between a magical experience and a disappointing one.

Reserve Your Place For Activities And Tours

You will often find discounts online when you book certain tours and experiences in advance of your trip. Once you have your travel dates and destination nailed down, search for tours and activities in the area. Find the ones that interest you, and chances are you can receive a discount by booking early. Make the reservation and enter it into your online calendar as one of your vacation activities. You will not have to wait in line to buy tickets at higher prices on the day of your scheduled visit. You also avoid the disappointment of finding out the tickets are sold out.

Consider Credit Card Rebates For Travel

Some credit card companies offer higher rebates on certain types of purchases throughout the year. For example, a credit card could offer 5% back on all hotel purchases or for rental cars. Log the dates those discounts are offered on your calendar, assigning a unique color code to it. You may find that many of the purchases you already planned to make are covered by credit card rebates. This is a great way to save money, assuming you commit to paying off the card balance when you return. Otherwise, the interest charges applied to the credit card will easily wipe out your savings and end up making your trip more expensive.

Avoid Airline Booking Fees

You can save money for your next trip if you pick your seats early. Once you identify the airline and the flight, find out when the first opportunity to pick seats is. Mark that date on your online calendar so you don’t miss out on options. You may find yourself waiting and paying $30 or more per seat to get what you want. This is a great way to avoid airline booking fees if you are traveling with a companion you want to sit with on your flight.

Eat Local

You can save money on food by planning meals at inexpensive, but interesting local restaurants. It might be a sandwich shop, a pizza parlor, or a falafel restaurant. You don’t need expensive dining or big-money chain options. The local eateries that are off the tourist route often offer inexpensive options and feature local food favorites. It’s a great way to save money and learn more about your destination. If the restaurants take reservations, take advantage of the opportunity and make one. Better to have a seat guaranteed at a restaurant that is half full than be shut out at a place that is overbooked by locals.

Eat Early

Something many travelers don’t know is that you will spend more for dinner than lunch in many countries. Many restaurants offer lunch specials to attract business. Consider loading up on a large lunch, and spending less on breakfast and dinner. You can check online for lunch specials at your destination before you arrive. If you find deals in certain restaurants that look appealing, reserve spots there and add them to your online calendar.

Don’t Be Afraid To Haggle

You can plan on big savings as you book your trip if you are not afraid to haggle when you arrive. In many countries, haggling is an expected activity that the locals encourage among street vendors and at markets. It is OK to offer less than the marked price for items, even for food at some locations. Do some research before you travel to learn more about the local customs. Make sure you understand the currency in your destination to ensure that you account for any currency fees and differences. Once you’re comfortable with what is expected and the currency, don’t be shy about haggling. It can help you save money for your vacation and get great deals on fun souvenirs.

Image Credit: Photo by Vojtech Okenka; Pexels; Thank you!

How to Find the Best Deals When Booking Your Next Trip was originally published on Calendar by Abby Miller.

How to Make Sure Your Team Can Take Vacations

By Jon Bradshaw | Business Tips | No Comments

Most of the time employers look for employees that will work hard every single day. Sometimes hard workers are difficult to come by, so when you do find valuable employees, you need to take care of them. A strange and often undiscussed aspect of employee management is making sure workers are taking adequate time off for vacations.

Telling your employees not to work might sound counterproductive at first. In reality, regular vacations can do wonders for employee morale and health. Life isn’t all about working, nor should it be. By encouraging your team members to take time off you’re helping them get needed rest, time with family, and lifelong memories to look back on.

Part of your responsibility is to cultivate a culture and environment that allows workers to take vacations without being punished for it. The following are examples of policies and tactics you can put into place to make sure your team gets their proper vacation time:

Implement Vacation Policies

One of the surest ways to make sure your team is using their vacation time is by implementing specific vacation policies. These policies will be a condition of employment and must be followed.

Let’s say your employees accrue roughly 10 days of vacation time per year. This is roughly the average time granted to full-time employees with minimal experience at a company. A policy that you choose to implement may revolve around vacation time accrual and rollover. Perhaps an employee can only hold up to 15 days of vacation time, which encourages them to use some of it up before they’re topped off.

For particularly stubborn employees, you can select days for them to take off when they’ve hit a certain amount of hours accrued. If their day off is in the schedule, it will be a lot harder for them to dispute the time. Restrictions on overtime hours can also be of help. At the very least make sure your federal holidays are acknowledged and plan around these days for additional company days. This allows your employees to have longer breaks and it not hurt productivity as much since others outside the company are also on vacations.

Communicate Mandatory Event Details

Knowing the days that are available for booking vacations will help your employees know when to pull the trigger. You need to communicate any mandatory company events well-beforehand to make this possible. Getting a late notice about a company-wide mandatory meeting will strongly discourage employees from booking their vacations.

Your annual meetings at the turn of the calendar should address any meetings that will be mandatory for all employees. Even if it’s only a single meeting that you will make universally required, you should try and set the date as early as possible. Even providing a range of dates will allow employees to plan for time off around the proposed meeting without any issues.

Encourage Department Collaboration

Communication and collaboration need to be just as strong on a departmental level. While you are encouraging employees to take time off, you need to acknowledge that in most circumstances they will need a temporary stand-in. Coordination is required to make sure that too many workers aren’t absent from the same department simultaneously.

An easy rule to establish is that vacation time must be requested at least two weeks in advance. If certain days have already been claimed, no one else can take vacation time on those days. Two weeks should be plenty of time to make adequate arrangements. Besides, many vacations can be planned even further in advance to iron out all the details.

The exact guidelines you put into place will greatly depend on your organization. A marketing company might not need others to cover shifts and therefore can be more lenient when granting vacation time. All businesses might make adjustments to their policies during the holidays when everyone wants to plan trips and time off. Do what’s best for your team specifically.

Check Vacation Calendars Regularly

As a manager, you will have access to the work calendars of each member of your team. You will also have access to their vacation calendar, or lack of one. If you notice that one of your employees never takes time off, you can approach them to work out a plan.

Talk with your employee and discuss the reasons why they don’t take vacation time. Maybe they’re overly concerned about job security or really want to get a promotion. This opens up doors for mentorship and guidance as well as assurance that all will be well even if they take some extra time off.

When workers return from their vacations, welcome them with open arms. Ask about their travels and maybe even request to see the pictures they took. Then, do what you can to help them hit the ground running upon their return. Employees will feel invigorated after trips and not guilty about taking them in the first place.

Everyone loves a good vacation and your hard-working employees certainly are deserving. Enabling them to take good vacations will improve their morale, work-life balance, and satisfaction with your company. All of this adds up to an improved workforce. What employer doesn’t want that?

Image Credit: Element5 Digital; Pexels; Thanks!

Best Types of Apps for Business Travelers

By Max Palmer | Business Tips | No Comments

Numerous work capacities require a lot of annual travel. Some occupations travel for a living, such as hotel inspectors that need to hit multiple cities throughout the year. Entrepreneurs and business owners might travel to each of their companies or meetings with other business leaders in their industry. The average business traveler takes almost seven trips a year. That’s the equivalent of jumping on a flight at least every other month. Therefore, taking advantage of travel time is crucial to making the most of all of these trips.

Being equipped with the right software makes traveling so much easier and more effective. The following list will detail the six most valuable types of apps business travelers should have downloaded for every trip:

Time Management As a Business Traveler

Time is a businessperson’s most valuable asset. Managing your time on a trip is just as important, especially if you’re juggling a heavy meeting schedule with a business back at home. That’s why a time management app should be your highest priority to download.

Of course, Calendar is an excellent option for all the business travelers out there. Time zone recognition seamlessly moves all of your appointments and reminders to your geographic location. Your team can also see your schedule, so they know when they are able to contact you in between travel commitments.

Using Calendar will also help you stick with good routines even while on the road. Keeping up with morning and evening routines can be difficult without a Calendar schedule to give you some needed structure.

Sleep and Meditation

When you’re on the road, sleep can sometimes be elusive. However, that doesn’t make it any less important, so you need to do what you can to get enough rest each night. An app that helps you fall asleep can do just the trick.

Sleep apps use white noise or guided instructions to help you wind down for the night, even in a strange hotel or in a different time zone. These apps also have guided meditation to relax and focus before a big meeting or for nervous fliers.

Your smartphone might even have a built-in app for monitoring your sleep. While this might not be as useful for ensuring that you get good rest, it can help you evaluate your sleep and if you need to make any changes to your routine.

Communication

Let’s say you’re taking an international business trip where your cell phone service coverage is sketchy and doesn’t reach you. So how do you stay in touch with family, friends, and coworkers? A simple communication app will fix all of your problems.

WhatsApp is an excellent example of a communication app you can download for an international trip. It can work off of a Wi-Fi connection alone, meaning you can send texts and make calls without the need for a cell phone connection.

Most social media apps also have communication features, such as Facebook Messenger. For example, you can send messages back home to friends and family quickly this way.

Fitness and Exercise

Getting your daily exercise is essential even on the road. An exercise app can help you put together workouts and commit to exercise even without access to your local gym or home equipment. You might even be able to find a workout routine that you can do in your hotel room without any equipment.

An app such as MyFitnessPal will also help you keep track of what you eat. A balanced diet is another essential aspect of health and fitness, and one where you might lose control throughout a trip. Keeping an app on hand will help you stay conscious of your health goals and actively pursue them.

Project Management

When the cat is away, the mice will play. This saying is a common phrase used to describe a work setting when the boss is out of the office. Without direct supervision, workers are more likely to slack off and kick their feet up. Of course, this is just human nature, but it’s not what a manager wants to see when they’re away on a trip.

Entrepreneurs and corporate leaders often turn to project management software to ensure that work is still getting done. These programs allow managers to assign tasks in great detail over a long period of time. The boss can even send notifications while they’re in a different city.

Most project management software has a mobile app that allows leaders to guide even from afar. In addition, you can download programs such as ClickUp or Slack to your smartphone or tablet to check in from time to time and keep things running smoothly.

Ridesharing as a Business Traveler

Most business travelers will choose ridesharing over renting a car. Ridesharing is less expensive, especially if you don’t need to drive around much. Having your rideshare app ready to go ensures you get where you need to go at the exact time you need.

Uber and Lyft are the two big ridesharing companies right now. You can easily download both apps to compare prices and availability in the area you have traveled to. This way, you know you’re getting the best rate and the quickest service no matter where you are.

Open up your smartphone and take inventory of the apps you have. Then, start downloading everything you might need for your next trip and give them a try. After some trial and error, you’ll have the ideal digital suite for all of your traveling needs.

7 Time-Saving Tips for Business Travel

By John Hall | Business Tips | No Comments

From overcrowded airports to lost luggage and long lines, travel isn’t always easy. However, with a bit of planning and adjusting your travel tactics, you’ll discover plenty of things you can do to save time and avoid any travel-related stresses.

By becoming a loyal airline customer and joining a frequent flier program, you’ll receive priority treatment and perks like early boarding or TSA pre-check. By making it a habit to travel only with a carry-on, you avoid wasting time at bag drop or baggage claim. Not only that, but you won’t be at risk of the airline losing your luggage either.

When it comes to business, it’s important to be cautious of your time and reduce your risks from any travel hiccups. To learn more, check out these seven time-saving tips when traveling for business.

1. Avoid peak travel times

If your schedule allows for it, when booking travel, try to avoid peak travel times like before the weekend or during rush hour. According to research, airports are typically busiest early in the morning or early evening, and slowest on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Therefore, if you can manage to take an afternoon flight or a redeye, or get out of town mid-week, you don’t have to worry about any airport chaos.

2. Join a frequent flier program

Committing to one airline is a great way to relieve travel-related stress and elevate your overall experience. If you’re a member of a good frequent flier program, you’ll receive special perks and benefits. For example, if you’re stuck at the airport due to a delay, you’ll be able to enjoy the airline’s VIP lounges. Or, when checking in, going through security and boarding the plane, you’ll typically get priority over passengers who are not part of that airline’s frequent flier program.

3. Plan ahead

Don’t just assume you’ll be able to quickly hail a cab or hop in the car two hours before your flight. In order to avoid traffic or any unexpected delays, do your research ahead of time. By checking and comparing various types of transportation methods, you’ll be able to figure out which is the fastest, most convenient and cost-effective mode for you. Not only that, but you’ll alleviate any stress that might come with last-minute panning.

4. Only travel with a carry-on

For smooth-sailing on and off the plane, never check a bag and pack smartly in a single carry-on bag. By using a carry-on, you’ll avoid the hassle of dropping your bag and picking it up at baggage claim. Additionally, it will also force you to pack smartly and efficiently.

5. Sign up for Global Entry

If you typically fly internationally, signing up for Global Entry is a no-brainer. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program gives qualifying travelers an expedited customs process. According to the Dept. of Homeland Security’s website, the program allows “expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival into the U.S.” All it takes is a background check and interview in order to join.

6. Download your ticket to your phone

Gone are the days of printing paper plane tickets. Today, nearly every airline allows passengers to download e-tickets directly onto their smartphones. By downloading your e-ticket, you skip the hassle of printing your boarding pass and you don’t have to worry about misplacing it either.

7. Ask yourself if travel is really necessary

Before you go through the hassle of coordinating a business trip and spending days outside of the office, make sure that a trip is essential. Thanks to today’s technology, it’s incredibly convenient to conduct business across the globe using apps like Skype and Hangouts. In fact, apps like these reduce the need for in-person meetings because they allow us to have virtual video calls. So, before you start planning your trip, assess if a face-to-face meeting is really necessary.

7 Time-Saving Tips for Business Travel was originally published on Calendar by John Hall