To paraphrase Annie Get Your Gun, there’s no incompetent business traveller like an incompetent professional business traveller. Getting people from A to B might be the essence of our job, but when we head off on a journey ourselves it turns out we are far more likely to end up instead at C, or not at all, or at least not with our dignity intact.
Here then is a festive collection of spectacular business trip mess-ups kindly volunteered by luminaries from the corporate travel world. Our huge thanks to each of them for being such fantastic sports by sharing their most embarrassing moments with us. You will not believe how many ways there are to get every step of a journey so spectacularly wrong...
It’s behind you!
Arriving in Aberdeen one very cold night, I spent 45 long minutes queuing for a taxi in minus temperatures. When it finally arrived, I hopped in and gave the driver my hotel name, to which he replied, “Are you having a laugh?” I was confused until I followed where his finger was pointing. My hotel. Which I had spent three-quarters of an hour standing next to in the freezing cold.
Alice Linley-Munro, travel manager, Oil Spill Response
Kent stop me now
When I joined Eurostar many years ago, as an employee I was entitled to catch our trains at Waterloo and alight at Ashford International station (not something the public can do as Eurostar isn’t licensed to carry domestic passengers). In my first week with the company I travelled down late one afternoon to meet my new customer contact centre team. I was perplexed as the train showed no sign of slowing down as we approached Ashford and was even more so as we entered the tunnel… first stop Brussels! When we emerged in France, I phoned my wife to explain I might not be home that night. Far from getting any sympathy, she found my easy mistake sufficiently funny to tell my boss, Ian Brooks, when he happened to call my home. Ian, in turn, felt it necessary to re-tell the tale on his next call that evening, which just happened to be with Richard Branson. All this before I had even arrived at Brussels.
Adrian Watts, director, Pewley Partners
Grin and bare it
Not my proudest business trip moment was getting off a British Airways flight at London Heathrow, all dolled and dressed up (this was back in the early Nineties) in very high heels. Everyone was looking at me and smiling, so I flung back my hair and straightened my back as I sashayed down the aisle. But as I continued walking it felt like something was not right in my ankle area. Any woman who remembers “stay up” stockings will know how I felt as I realised both of them had lost their grip and were now wrapped around my shoes.
Alexandra Novak, global head of travel sourcing, Ericsson
Sounds about right...
I seem to have had a few troubles over the years: mistaking Wells for Wales, and who knew La Palma was not the same as Palma?
Douglas O’Neill, CEO, Inntel
The bottom line
I was flying on American Airlines to Dallas for a Global Business Travel Association conference. Before boarding I had changed into a pink tracksuit. Some time after the crew darkened the cabin, I left my lie-flat seat to go to the loo. When I came back I eased myself rear-end first into my seat. Only it wasn’t my seat: I sat right on top of another, male, passenger’s head. I fled back to my own seat and then later on I snuck back to the loo and changed again into some black bottoms so he wouldn’t recognise me when we got off the plane.
Carol Fergus, director of global travel events and ground transportation, Fidelity International
Unfam trip
When I was working for a hotel company, I took a bunch of travel industry people on a fam trip to Washington DC. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I got off the flight I realised I had left the entire printed agenda for the trip in the seat-back, but security wouldn’t let me back on. It was a weekend, and this was before everyone had smartphones with all their e-mails on them, so it was very much a case of “Right, what do we fancy doing?” It didn’t matter too much because we ended up having a good time but I’m sure there were places we were booked to visit where we never turned up.
Juliette Jackman, head of business development Europe, TripBam
Guy’s and gal’s
I was once flying from Heathrow to Milan and when I got to the gate I handed over my passport for inspection, at which point it became clear that in fact it was the passport of my 12-month-old daughter. Not only was I not allowed on the flight but I then had to exit from airside via arrivals, where again I had to show the wrong passport at the control point. Luckily, the officer rolled his eyes to the heavens, took pity on me, made a phone call and let me through. There was also the time I spent 30 minutes looking for my car in the airport car park after flying back into Heathrow, until I finally remembered I had come to the airport by train.
Guy Snelgar, global business travel director, Advantage Global Business Travel Partnership
Losing it
I flew back home to Zurich after a business trip and then wandered over to the airport car park, where I couldn’t find my car anywhere. I looked up and down but to no avail. Clearly, my vehicle could only have been stolen, so I called the police to report the theft. Needless to say, about five minutes later after a bit more walking around, I did come across my vehicle. Sheepishly, I called the police back to let them know what had happened. The officer asked me whether I was drunk and unfit to drive my car home. I had to tell him no, I was just an idiot. Even now I can recall him weeping with laughter as he put the phone down on me.
Dominic Short, owner, CDABS
Van will we get there?
When I was in charge of global travel procurement at IKEA, I had to visit our UK headquarters at Wembley, and spent the night at our nearby preferred hotel, a Holiday Inn. The next morning I had a flight from Heathrow at 11am. Company policy was to take public transport to the airport, but luckily the hotel operated a free shuttle to the nearest train station. I was busy on a business call, so I did not pay much attention when a black van pulled up and I jumped straight in. I sat next to the driver as the back of the vehicle was already full, and off we went.
We drove into the centre of Wembley but strangely didn’t stop. Then next thing we were on a busy highway. I turned around to look at the other passengers and realised they were all beautiful and very smartly dressed. At this point I asked the driver when he was taking me to the station. He told me this was a privately hired van transporting actors to a studio in the countryside to film a BBC drama – and he couldn’t drop me off because we were on a highway. So, I had to join them all the way. Once we had dropped off the actors, the driver agreed to drive me back, but only to Wembley and for a price of £200. Eventually, I got to Heathrow but of course I had missed my flight, and also had to spend £300 on another ticket.
I paid for all this out of my own pocket. Some months later I confessed the whole story to my boss, who, once he had stopped laughing, told me he would have approved my unscheduled travel expense. But I felt so stupid that I refused.
Yves Galimidi, procurement category manager FM, SD Work Belgium