Hospitality & TravelSomeone arranging a trip for themselves or their family

When I travel for work, I want to keep working while away, so I am not repaying the whole workload when I return.

Khi tôi đi công tác, tôi muốn vẫn làm được việc trên đường, để không phải bù lại toàn bộ khối lượng công việc sau khi về.

Job context

Who: A frequent business traveller
When: Across the trip
Trigger: A three-day trip leaving a week of backlog
Situation: The work does not pause because you left
Constraints: The meeting schedule is fixed and the working conditions are not

No way to know if the room has anywhere to work
High
The photographs show the bed, not the desk.
Root cause: Accommodation describes itself by where you sleep
The internet cannot hold a call
High
Discovered once the meeting has started.
Root cause: Internet quality is neither measured nor published
Time zones out of step with the team
Medium
Turning one day into two shifts.
Root cause: The team at home keeps its own hours
Nowhere quiet to take a call
Medium
The lobby is loud and housekeeping enters the room.
Root cause: The spaces are designed for resting, not for working
Paying up front and waiting for reimbursement
Medium
Weeks before the money comes back.
Root cause: Expense processes are designed around control, not around the traveller

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

Stay with a chain already known
Behaviour
Predictable conditions, discarding every better option.
Carry a personal internet device
Product
The only self-reliant route, adding a cost and one more thing to carry.
Book a meeting room by the hour
Service
Solves the actual problem, requiring a schedule that will not change.
Compress calls into one window
Behaviour
The most effective answer to time zones, requiring the team to move.
Use a company card instead of personal money
Product
Removes the funding problem, and not every employer issues one.

Accommodation describes itself by where you sleep because that is what is sold by the night, while what this group needs is working conditions, which appear in no field.
Why existing solutions fail: Measuring and publishing internet speed exposes a property to direct comparison on a number it cannot control day to day, so nobody goes first, and the whole trade stops at free wifi.
Potential opportunity: Speed measurements and photographs of the desk contributed by business guests, with dates.
The business traveller sits between two parties: the property sells a bed and the employer pays by the night, and neither is accountable for whether the person can actually work.
Why existing solutions fail: Travel policy is written to control cost, so it optimises the nightly rate and ignores the value of the person still being able to work, a number nobody measures and therefore nobody defends.
Potential opportunity: Making working conditions a criterion of travel policy, level with the nightly rate.