Marriott & Business Travel

As a general rule, business travel kind of sucks.  It is a means to an end that occasionally has its perks, but those perks rarely make the overall experience worth it.

Someone much wiser and smarter than I am in these matters once advised me that the average employee loathes business travel.  Maybe 10% of employees are willing to travel with any real frequency, like quarterly and maybe 5% willing to travel on a monthly basis or better.  Real road warriors make up maybe a percentage or two at best.  This breakdown came from a guy who was responsible for hiring road warrior national sales reps and the numbers seemed to work well for me.

At my previous employer I traveled a fair amount....enough to make middling elite status with a couple airlines and Platinum Elite status with Marriott.  For Marriott's Platinum Elite you have to spend 75 nights a year at their properties.  75 night is roughly 20% of the year, but when you look at it from a business standpoint, that 75 days of travel lodging is 33%, which means you are out of the office a week every month...or a day or two a week.

That heavy travel year was 2009.  The economy has taken a bit of a turn since then and I haven't been on the road so much.  Marriott has been kind enough to extend my status last year and then again for this year.

I don't have a lot of travel planned so far, but who knows where my job search will take me. I can tell you though that if Marriott is going to be loyal to me, I sure will be returning the favor.