On the Road: Only Essential Travelers Remain, Warily, in Egypt

“We had several thousand clients there before the summer, but we’re down now to probably only a couple of hundred people in-country, mostly corporate people staying in facilities just outside of Cairo where they feel potentially less impacted than people would be in hotels,” Bruce McIndoe, the chief executive of iJet International, a global risk management and response company based in Annapolis, Md., said on Monday.

Last month, when the turmoil began accelerating, corporate travel managers with employees in Egypt were reminded once again of the growing importance of so-called duty-of-care legal provisions in countries around the world. When applied to traveling employees, those provisions hold corporate executives responsible for maintaining risk management travel policies to help ensure safe working conditions.

Among other things, employers are expected to know where their traveling employees are, to regularly evaluate security and safety conditions in places where they send employees and to be able to communicate with them. Employers also are generally expected to have emergency procedures, including those for getting employees out quickly.

I will add here that business travelers, especially those in places where civil turmoil or natural disasters are factors, also have responsibilities, beyond the legal obligations of their employers. Even the most carefully managed corporate travel risk systems begin to fail when travelers in such circumstances book out of policy — that is, freelance their own arrangements that a manager back home can’t keep track of in an emergency. Communication is a two-way street.

In Egypt, where major corporations like Royal Dutch Shell have closed offices and cut off nearly all business travel, companies with travelers still in the country have mostly pulled back to secured areas, where conditions are being monitored hour by hour.

Business travelers in Egypt are mostly “people working on various kinds of contracts that they don’t want to depart. They’re mainly people who have an essential need to be there at this point,” said John Rendeiro, the vice president for security and intelligence at International SOS, a global security and medical emergency response company based near Philadelphia.

“Most of our clients had already drawn down the nonessential folks” since early summer, he said. Most who remain “are in corporate lodging, and they’re mainly essential people who have really good reason to be there and already have a pretty good security posture,” he said.

Now, travel risk experts say, the basic requirements are caution and good information. Emergency plans and communications systems should be carefully evaluated, they add. Few business travelers still in Egypt need to be reminded of the basic precautions issued in government travel alerts worldwide, like avoiding mobs. Most who are still in Egypt know the landscape by now.

And indications are that security conditions will worsen, at least in the short term, they agree. “We have our travel services on the ground, where we already had networks of security providers, medical providers who are constantly monitoring the situation. These are people who essentially know the neighborhood very well already,” Mr. Rendeiro said.

“What we’re telling people now is don’t send people there if they’re not there already,” Mr. McIndoe said. “So far, most of the transient people we have pulled out went out on commercial flights, but that is complicated by the curfew.”

At the busy Cairo International Airport, which handles 16 million passengers a year, flight delays were mounting over the weekend, in some cases stretching to 12 hours and more. But delays were minimal by Monday afternoon. One major factor in air travel was the curfew imposed last Wednesday in much of the country, causing logistical challenges for passengers, flight crews and airport employees. There were also some problems caused by limited access and checkpoints on airport approach roads.

“In the last couple of days we’ve been working through the curfew,” Mr. McIndoe said. In recent days, he added, the company has moved out more than two dozen clients who opted to leave simply because security measures on travel liability insurance policies had been activated by rapidly deteriorating conditions.

Airport officials are struggling to accommodate the growing numbers of travelers at the airport, including those backed up at visa and immigration and ticket counters where staffing was a problem as some employees found it difficult to get to work. But the curfew remains the biggest challenge, and Mr. McIndoe said that his company had been transporting clients to the airport in security vehicles. “Basically, we’re working with the airlines to make sure we secure seats,” he said. “And we’re also transporting people in convoys, with a lead vehicle probing for roadblocks or other issues.”

Partly on assumptions that the Egyptian military will be able to control unrest on the streets, and given the solid communications and transportation in place in Egypt, there is no obvious sense of panic among the foreign business travelers who remain. Nevertheless, Mr. Rendeiro said, “We have arranged for planes on standby, in case they’re needed.”

On the Road: Extreme-Weather Workouts Have Pitfalls for Travelers

“Too chilly,” Mr. Boudreau joked as he stood by a golf cart, squinting at the sunny green expanse of the golf course at the Furnace Creek Resort in Death Valley National Park. Mr. Boudreau was one of about 30 hardy golfers waiting two Saturdays ago to tee off at the Heatstroke Open, an annual golf tournament for golfers at Furnace Creek, the very spot where the highest air temperature ever on earth was once recorded — 134 degrees on July 10, 1913.

But at 7 a.m., with the temperature just nudging the 90s, Mr. Boudreau and other golfers seemed disappointed. “Heck, I played here once when it hit 129 — the kind of day when you can’t put a golf club down in the sun because you won’t be able to pick it up again,” he said. And that afternoon, as the last of the golfers finished their rounds, the temperature still was barely touching 100.

Alas for the golf extremists, the Heatstroke Open had happened a week too early. Last weekend, the high temperature on both Saturday and Sunday in Death Valley was 128 degrees. But by Monday, when the high was forecast to be 126, the major sporting focus at Death Valley was on preparations for another outdoor activity pursued by many business travelers anywhere they happen to travel: running.

Like the Heatstroke Open, the 36th annual Badwater Ultramarathon, scheduled for July 15 to 17, is a celebration of extremes. But unlike the golf tournament, open to any duffer who has sufficient will power, water, sunscreen, stamina and the inclination to be in Death Valley in the summer, the so-called Badwater 135 is an invitational event that annually draws about 100 of the toughest, most serious runners from around the world.

How serious? Consider that the race begins in the hellfire depths of Death Valley at Badwater, the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere, and continues day and night for 135 miles westward over scorching desert and across two California mountain ranges, before ending at 8,360 feet up Mount Whitney.

Lessons for the rest of us? Well, even golfers sometimes forget that extreme heat, which is often deceptive when accompanied by very dry conditions, needs to be approached with extreme caution. And business travelers, who typically tug on the sneakers after arrival at a hotel and look for a place to run anywhere they are, might find it useful to hear from the true masters of the running universe, especially now that it’s so darn hot, literally on the road.

The Badwater race often starts with temperatures in the 120-degree range, when asphalt on that sunblasted road out of the valley can radiate over 180 degrees. What kind of runners seek this out?

“It bothers me sometimes when you hear people say these people are insane or have some kind of death wish,” said Chris Kostman, whose title is chief adventure officer at Adventurecorps, a California-based organizer of ultra-endurance sports events that runs the Badwater 135. Mr. Kostman, an archaeologist and endurance athlete who is also the Badwater race director, said that the runners who come to Death Valley — he said 80 percent of them cross the finish line — are at their physical peak: superbly conditioned, aware of the difficulties, driven to endure.

“A lot of people just focus on the Death Valley heat part, which is just the first third of the race,” he added. After the long, desolate valley, there are mountain ranges and finally that 13-mile climb to the finish line on Mount Whitney. “It can be like 30 degrees up there, and the day before, it could have been 130 in the desert,” he said.

Even for everyday runners, heat is a big factor in unfamiliar places, said Jenny Hadfield, a top-ranked endurance athlete and coach who is the author of books like “Running for Mortals” and “Marathoning for Mortals.” In dry, hot places “your body sweats, of course, but you don’t realize it because it dries so quickly,” said Ms. Hadfield, who has crewed at the Badwater 135.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke can occur quickly to the unaware, whether in dry climates or humid ones. “On a hot day in Chicago, you’re sweating so profusely, sometimes even before you run, it doesn’t evaporate in the humidity. Your body dehydrates quickly and heats up quickly because your body is on overtime trying to cool itself,” said Ms. Hadfield, who offers tips for conditioning and running in heat on her Web site, Jennyhadfield.com.

“One good tip is to run intervals, the easiest way to keep your body cool,” Ms. Hadfield said. “If you go into a situation where it’s really humid or really, really hot and you’re struggling; you’re breathing heavily at your normal effort, just add a minute or two of power-walking to bring everything back down,”

She added: “When I travel, which is a lot, I typically do some running. But in extreme weather, frankly, I just run inside. I always book my travel for a hotel chain where I know they’re going to have a nice treadmill.”

More Business Travelers Stay With Friends Instead of in Hotels

Under pressure to hold down costs, some business travelers are finding that the best way to save on a hotel is not to stay in one at all.

Instead, they are staying in the homes and apartments of friends and relatives when they have to go out of town.

The savings can be substantial. Andrew Schrage, founder of the financial advice Web site Money Crashers, said in an e-mail that the amount “depends on the city, but one can save more than $100 per day when you factor in lodging, food and transportation.” He added, “Once I realized how much money can be saved by staying with friends or family, it’s always my first choice whenever the opportunity is available.”

Mr. Schrage, 26, has even built the savings into bonuses for his staff. “If they chose to stay with a friend, family member or co-worker, we calculate what the lodging would have cost and issue them a cash bonus of 30 percent of that amount,” he said.

Betsy Flanagan, a social media specialist in the San Francisco area who is vice president for student engagement at Ivy Bridge College, a subsidiary of the online educational program Altius Education, said she thought she had saved “$1,000 to $3,000 a year over the past few years” by staying with friends and family, or “maybe a little bit more.”

One of her biggest savings came in 2007, when she attended the five-day PodCamp new media conference in New York. The conference’s host hotel cost $300 a night. She stayed instead with a former college roommate in Connecticut — an hour’s train ride, $20 round-trip, from Manhattan. “It was worth it for me for the cost,” she said, adding that she enjoyed the side benefit of visiting a friend, but “it wasn’t as easy as staying in the conference hotel.”

Ms. Flanagan said staying with friends was part of a larger savings strategy. “I am also very frugal with buying airfare,” she said. She will buy plane tickets a year in advance if she can, she said, and she has tried to get free conference badges by volunteering.

The payoff was more than simply saving on a particular trip. By being careful with her spending, Ms. Flanagan could afford “to go to conferences and learn things and therefore change my career,” she said.

Entrepreneurs said that saving on travel allowed them to use their money more effectively when their businesses were in the fragile, early stages. Shannon Payette Seip, co-founder of Bean Sprouts, a line of cafes, products, books and television shows focusing on healthy eating for children, said friends had also given social support and strategic advice.

“It’s great to have cheerleaders for you and your company, but also to save money until the deals fall into place,” said Ms. Seip, 39, who lives in Madison, Wis. Also, she said, “if we were in a hotel room, it would mean lying around and doing other things, TV, vegging, instead of talking or using it as meeting time.”

Dana Humphrey, who owns Whitegate Public Relations in New York, said she used the fact that she saves money by staying with friends and family as a competitive strategy. “It is a selling point for me,” she said. When she attended a pet show in Washington, for instance, she told one of her pet product clients that “they don’t have to pay for me to stay there, because I have friends in D.C.”

Ms. Humphrey, 29, added that she enjoyed the social aspect of seeing her friends on business trips. “My whole point is to get on these trips to visit friends,” she said.

But the stays are not always trouble-free. Ms. Humphrey said she could work “anywhere as long as I have a cellphone and Internet.” But that can be a challenge when friends have bad Internet connections.

“I am a demanding guest,” she said. “I don’t just want to be here for free. I want the Internet when I arrive.”

Some travelers said they used the Internet to find free or inexpensive places to stay. They search on Craigslist, as well as on paying sites like AirBnB, which allows people to rent apartments or rooms inexpensively, and CouchSurfing.com.

In an e-mail, Ms. Humphrey said that she had used CouchSurfing, “mainly with my sister,” but that she would not use it for a business trip. “Usually CouchSurfers are very open-minded and cool,” she said.

When staying with friends or family, boundary issues are to be expected. Mr. Schrage, the Money Crashers founder, said he had encountered “privacy issues when staying with friends or having them stay with me, more so than when I stay with family members.” With relatives, he said, “rules regarding privacy and boundaries are generally understood.”

William D. Pitney, 43, a financial planner in the San Francisco area, said he often stayed with relatives or friends when traveling. To avoid potential tensions, he recommended that business travelers “set the boundaries before you get into the situation.” He said travelers should ask several questions, including, “How close are you to the relative or friend?” and, “If you approve me staying there, do we have to hang out? What do you expect?”

Additionally, he said, “When it comes to friends, I have to know their spouse and that the spouse approves.”

Mr. Pitney and others also suggested helping with household chores and buying groceries. “If by staying with a friend, I saved $800 to $1,500, from this to pay $100 for the food bill, I am still saving $700 to $1,400,” he said. He and other travelers also said they took their hosts to dinner as a thank-you.

Sometimes, the small size of friends’ apartments can be problematic. Ms. Seip, the Bean Sprouts entrepreneur, said that in 2010, she and her business partner, Kelly Parthen, 40, “cramped into a one-bedroom apartment in New York the night before our ‘Good Morning America’ taping.” Her host family, she said, “had a dog, our friend was pregnant and there were baby shower gifts all over the place.” Excited about the show the next morning, their friends also wanted to talk, though the two visitors preferred sleeping.

The two also had a fear that would not arise in a hotel. In addition to baby gifts, Ms. Seip said, “we brought food for the dog, so the dog would not eat our props.” Starting a company, she added, “is a very strange road.”

On the Road: Public Speaking Pays the Fare for Some Business Travelers

Consider that there are many thousands of corporate and professional meetings, trade shows, conventions, conferences and other events every year, and that the meetings business has been growing, domestically and internationally. And just about every one features a selection of public speakers. My guess is that most flights include at least one business traveler headed somewhere to give a speech of some kind.

“I never really thought of it that way, but obviously that’s the case,” said Peter V. Handal, the chief executive of Dale Carnegie Training, a company that provides training in communications and leadership skills.

Public speaking is, of course, a basic requirement in many jobs, from the pulpit to the front office. But it’s also a thriving business that provides employment, or extra income, to thousands of people from all parts of life who travel for speaking engagements that can pay from $1,500 or so to well over $200,000 just to talk for an hour or so.

Over $200,000 for a speech? Well, that’s about what Bill Clinton averaged per speaking engagement in 2011, when he made a total of $13.4 million for 54 paid speeches, according to a CNN analysis based on financial disclosure statements filed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Nor is Mr. Clinton alone in the top niche of highly paid speakers. Just among English speakers, the ranks of those who command $100,000 or more for a speech (plus first-class travel expenses) include Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey, Alan Greenspan, Al Gore, Richard Branson and many others.

But there are many others, in multiple pay grades and in a vast range of specialties, who are all giving speeches. One indication that the demand is rising is in the job growth in the business of planning for meetings and trade shows. In 2010, 71,600 people were employed as meeting, convention and event planners in the United States. That number is “expected to grow 44 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And while it is hard to imagine that Bill Clinton or Richard Branson ever experienced anxiety about talking, public speaking remains a source of at least some anxiety for many businesspeople.

“A lot of people really are afraid of public speaking,” Mr. Handal said.

As noted on the Web site of Toastmasters International, a nonprofit group that encourages the development of speaking skills at its 15,500 clubs around the world, “Believe it or not, your chances of dying of stage fright are extremely slim.”

On the other hand, even if you’re accustomed to public speaking, your chances of doing it more effectively are probably enhanced with training of the sort provided by Toastmasters and other organizations.

Mr. Handal said that the Dale Carnegie drills stressed gentle coaching. “We have somebody stand up in front of a group of people and give a two-minute talk, and they do it several times during the course of training.”

When I was younger, I was daunted by the prospect of giving a speech. Remember Jackie Gleason as the tongue-tied Ralph Kramden babbling “Homina, homina, homina” when he had to give a speech? That was what I feared I’d be, but after a few times at the lectern, I eventually got the hang of it. Familiarity is the key, as Mr. Handal said.

One curveball being thrown at public speakers, incidentally, comes from technology. At big events, the speaker’s image is often projected on giant video screens, allowing people to see quirks that once went largely unnoticed.

“If you’re all the way up on a stage in a room with 2,000 people, most people really can’t see the small inflections and changes in your facial expression,” Mr. Handal said. But with those giant screens, “suddenly they really can, which makes body language far more important than it ever was.”

He added: “One of the things we teach people is to smile more. I thought I was smiling, but after participating in one training session I reviewed the video with a coach, and I realized I looked like a sourpuss. There was a big disconnect between what I thought I was doing, and what I actually was doing on the video.”

Now, of course, if you’re one of those people getting $25,000, $50,000 or even $100,000-plus for a speech, not including your hotel suite and a first-class plane ticket, that is probably no longer an issue. You undoubtedly have a lot to smile about.

Itineraries: Wi-Fi Is Increasingly Essential for Airline Travelers

Tony Drockton, who owns a luxury handbag company in Southern California, used to take the overnight flight to New York, rather than waste business hours out of touch.

But now, his flight time is his work time as airlines increasingly offer Wi-Fi connections on their planes.

“I need to stay connected so people don’t realize where I am,” said Mr. Drockton, who now travels with a laptop, smartphone and over-the-ears headphones. “It allows me to fly during business hours and not miss any day.”

As to those travelers who enjoyed a few hours of being out of touch with the office, those days may be ending. Before Wi-Fi, “you had an excuse not to be in touch if you didn’t want to be,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, an airline and travel industry analyst in San Francisco. “The one last bastion of being off the grid has been taken away.”

And as airlines race to create connectivity on international flights through satellite Wi-Fi, the ability to stay online in the skies will only increase, experts say.

“Passengers have an expectation of ubiquitous connectivity in their lives, especially younger travelers,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “Walking on the street, in coffee shops, and it frustrates them when they get on a plane and they are told they’re offline. The traveler wants to have control over when they go online.”

Others echoed his analysis. “People want to be connected 24/7,” said Jonathan Kletzel, a transportation and logistics analyst at PWC. “It’s a question of whether airlines are getting ahead of the curve or not.”

For now, technology use in the sky remains lower than on other modes of transportation, said Joseph P. Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University.

Even so, Wi-Fi Internet access has expanded to 153 million passengers in 2011 from 153,000 in 2009, according to Gogo Wireless, a Wi-Fi provider for airlines.

According to a report this year from the Chaddick Institute, the percentage of air travelers using technology at “random selected points” on a flight was 28.4 percent in 2011, up from 23.2 percent in 2010 and 17.6 percent in 2009.

The report found that more travelers were bringing their own devices, including tablets and e-readers, with them on planes. One in 12 airline passengers is now using a tablet, and that number continues to grow. Tablets account for almost 30 percent of all technology use on commercial flights, and that share is also likely to grow. The use of tablets and technology, in general, tends to be “significantly higher on business-oriented flights,” the report said.

This leaves more than 70 percent of passengers who are not using a device, and may be using the airlines’ in-flight entertainment options, Dr. Schwieterman said.

Wi-Fi stretches back commercially four to five years. Now, nine commercial airlines have Wi-Fi air-to-ground service on all or some of their domestic flights. The fees depend on the length of the flight, and tend to range from $1.95 to $19 or more, according to Gogo.

Travelers are using the connection to do more than send e-mail. What travelers want, especially business travelers, is a myriad methods to stay productive and entertained while en route to their destination, airline experts said. They may use their own laptops or tablets as well as the in-flight entertainment system.

Mr. Drockton, for example, said he used e-mail, air-to-ground videoconferencing, the airline’s instant messenger system and the entertainment system in the seat back in front of him when he was flying. He said he relied on the power outlet under his seat to keep his laptop charged. “I plug in before they even close the door,” he said. “I’m already working before they take off.”

Until a few years ago, the airlines were a “technology wasteland,” Dr. Schwieterman said. Now, most major airlines, even those that were late to Wi-Fi, have committed to teaming up with one of the four major Wi-Fi providers. The airlines “want you to know that Wi-Fi is on the flight,” he said. “They know they need it for brand positioning.”

Still, Internet connectivity in flight has its shortcomings, though Mr. Harteveldt and other frequent fliers said they expected it to improve in its next generation. “If the Wi-Fi system is maxed out, it slows down,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “You can log off and not be able to get back on, or be booted off the system.”

Typically, the bandwidth of the Wi-Fi on a single-aisle plane like a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320 can handle 25 users at a time. If one traveler begins to download a large file, “the system slows to a crawl,” he said.

Kevin P. Nichols, 39, director of content strategy for SapientNitro, said that had been his experience. “It’s inconsistent, and you never know if it’s going to work or not,” he said.

Mr. Nichols said Wi-Fi and in-flight entertainment provided by the airlines were among the factors travelers now considered. “There are a lot of drivers in selecting an airline,” he said. “It’s people having access to what they want. We continually want to be plugged in.”

As for the future of in-flight technology, Mr. Harteveldt said it depended on technological developments, travelers’ preferences and airlines’ budgets. The airlines tend to update cabins every five years. Mr. Harteveldt predicted that within 10 years, flights would be a “B.Y.O. entertainment” environment — that is, bring your own.

Until then, travelers who want to stay productive and entertained en route to their business meetings are dependent on Wi-Fi.

Or, as Mr. Drockton put it: “It’s just about convenience and connectivity. I need it to work.”