The best summer business traveler is a prepared traveler

Business travelers are a special breed of traveler. Unlike leisure travelers, who are likely to be annoyed and frustrated by travel delays, business travelers are facing a different scenario. They could miss important meetings or even scheduled speaking events.

If you travel often for business, you know that strange and unexpected things can happen, so it pays to be prepared.

Every business traveler has their own set of tips and steps for handling emergencies, but we scoured the web to find the most useful:

• If you are checking your bags (see the airline chart of fees charged for baggage), pack a light change of clothes suitable for your initial activities in your carry-on. That way, if you land in London, but your bags land in Rio, you can still get through your day. Travel insurance plans typically require the bags to be delayed a number of hours (usually 12-24), which doesn’t help much if your interview occurs within hours of your landing.
• Carry a paper or mobile copy of your itinerary, hotel info, rental car numbers, etc. You won’t always have wireless available and a copy stored on your mobile device can save you in those situations.
• Sign up for flight status notifications with the airline so you can receive a text when flights are delayed. Program the airline phone numbers into your cell phone, so if the flight changes will impact your plans, you have a head start on making a flight change.
• Carry a healthy snack or two because you never know what will be available (or open) when you land. Plus, have you seen what the airlines are charging for basic snacks these days?
• Carry a USB memory stick or two in case you cannot connect your laptop to the projection system and they only way you can show the presentation is to move that file to their system.
• Ditto for a second – fully charged – laptop battery.

We recently posted that some airports are trying to make things easier on travelers. See some of the airport innovations we really like. Hint: look for locking charging stations to keep your cell phone and MP3 players well fueled.