Two-Part Series: Travel Planning and Working Remotely
Yes, you can work remotely. Anywhere. The delimiting factor is if the Internet and phone service are available. Maybe you want to unplug? No need to read further.
In the annual 2019 International Work Group study of 15,000 business people across 100 nations, the “results show there’s a major shift towards the employee – they now have more input on how they work and where they work.” Further, it states that “50% of employees globally are working outside their main office headquarters for at least 2.5 days a week.” According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau telecommuting data, “4.7 million employees (3.4% of the workforce) now work from home at least half the time.” Based upon personal experience working at Fortune 500 companies for 20 years that number seemed low to me. How about you?
Did you know that there are opportunities to work remotely from anywhere in the world? It’s available if you are in sales, security, data science, engineering, design, marketing or product based upon this list compiled by Mag Boron featuring more than 80 companies hiring talent remotely anywhere in the world.
You might think it complicated to set up your remote workplace but it’s not. If you are interested in how advances in tech can support a global nomad lifestyle, please read on regarding my personal experiences as a career consultant.
My husband and I spend on average 2 months outside the U.S. living in Europe, the Caribbean or South America as part of a global travel bucket list. So much has changed in technology within the past 20 years since we have been traveling together. The technology updates immensely increase our enjoyment of global living experiences. Planning a trip abroad? Here’s what we have learned starting with reminiscing about how things used to be.
20 Years Ago
A couple of decades ago, wireless phones were just gaining prominence and the cost per minute meant you took the phone but never turned it on except in the case of emergency unless you were on a corporate sojourn and could expense the minutes. At my first corporate job at Nortel Networks, we were issued a calling card for our trips to Asia, Canada, and Europe for using the hotel phone in your room. Remember those days?
For driving directions within certain parts of Europe, you accessed a French developed Michelin map. Today, the Michelin name is more prominently known to foodies for Michelin-star restaurants versus its beginnings in 1888 as a tire manufacturer for bicycles, horse-drawn carriages, and automobiles. Did you now that the Michelin guide for driving directions and restaurants was originally developed as a marketing tool to boost demand for cars to support selling their Michelin tires? The weird factoids in my brain.
Back then to book travel, you would call a travel agent who had a physical office located in town or a corporate travel agency located in a prominent city for booking airfare, car rental, and hotels. If you made payment for corporate lodging it was with a credit card while for personal travel in my case for St. Maarten it was a bank wire transfer with fingers crossed the property owner existed when we arrived at our rental home on Orient Beach. He did and we had a fabulous time.
Tech Advances Past 5 Years – Travel Planning
How times have changed. Now you can vet so many aspects of global travel online as an individual traveler for working anywhere with a data connection.
- Airline Tickets: My husband Pat is an airline booking wizard using a medley of sites including airfarewatchdog, AirGorilla, and Expedia to select the best value airfare and optimal routes. Once decided he books online with our frequent flyer airlines using credit card award mileage. He’s mastered the art of credit card online bonus sign up for 25K-60K mileage for free trips to Europe and the Caribbean achieving the required 3-month expenditure, paying off the card without interest, and canceling before the annual fee kicks in. Since our travel destinations increasingly are off the beaten path with 2-3 hops, he plans for the most direct routes to minimize hiccups related to canceled flights, weather, plane substitutions or lost luggage. It’s ironic as the chief travel planner his luggage tends to wander off more than mine. One time in Venezuela his luggage didn’t show up for 5 days. Upon leaving the country he ventured into the lost luggage room as big as a basketball court where he found the luggage just in time for the trip home. For those of you with a future 1-6-month travel destination looking to snag a great price, he recommends airefarewatchdog whereby you simply enter the beginning and end travel dates and they will send you email airfare rate updates for a destination.
- Lodging Booking: Whether you can work remotely or on sabbatical, the options to review and book lodging are just a couple clicks away. I have found for Europe that AirBnb which was founded in 2008 or a region-specific lodging web site offers the greatest selection of accommodations. What’s great about using these sites is you can access photos, read past guests reviews, select specific features such as Wi-Fi, air conditioning, and washing machine while pinpointing on the city map your desired location. Plus, for payment can you pay in dollars or local currency online with your credit card to help amass even more frequent flyer credit card award miles. For the Costa del Sol in Spain, I recommend Solaga. I have used VRBO but I find it provides less available listings in Europe compared to the U.S. Another option is using Booking.com which provides a travel meta-search engine for lodging reservations which features a mix of apartments, hostels, and hotels. In the past 3 years, we have operated this way for 1 month stays in Bordeaux, Gran Canaria, Malaga, Palermo, Sitges, Split, and St. Maarten without a problem with payment nor accommodation access even with some language challenges. My French continues to be a work-in-progress. Travaux.
- Payment: I often book accommodations whereby they require local currency upfront for a deposit of $300 or full monthly payment for a discount. What to do if you land after the banks close and you don’t have the Euro or Kuna in the case of Croatia even though they are in the EU? You can use an airport ATM, but most have daily withdrawal limits of $350. You can overcome this limit if your travel partner has a separate account. In our case, we signed up specifically for a USAA debit card and Charles Schwab bank account providing ATM debit withdrawals with zero foreign-exchange transaction fees and the ATM fees are rebated monthly. I considered pre-paying with an OFX global money transfer account or PayPal versus a bank wire transfer last year for a Canary Islands accommodation. Instead of paying through an Airbnb transaction, I requested a 15% monthly discount on an individual contract. The result was I incurred money transfer costs on both sides of the wire bank transfer transaction per my rental contract which became almost a break-even in my pursuit to save. Proving sometimes the best of intentions can go awry.
- Supplemental Medical Insurance: Since we are gone for a couple of months outside the U.S. and are no longer are spring chickens, I purchase online supplemental medical insurance. I have United Healthcare and Pat has Medicare. I purchased a supplement through SafeTrip/UnitedHealthcare Global. Why? Health insurance policies, including Medicare policies, which are valid where you live, often do not include medical coverage or evacuation coverage when abroad. The SafeTrip supplement allows most physicians and hospitals to provide you with the necessary medical treatment while abroad and will either send their bill directly to UnitedHealthcare Global, or in the case of small dollar amounts, may ask you to pay at time services are rendered. Think of them as your medical concierge at a great value price of only $450 annually covering both my husband and me for up to $550,000 in medical services with a $250 deductible. You can call them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year for assistance with not only medical but travel including replacement of lost or stolen travel documents and emergency travel arrangements. Think it can’t happen to you? It can. Within the past week I fell when hiking down a hilltop, nothing major that Advil and ice packs couldn’t fix. On the other hand, I had a friend last year that had to be evacuated out of Fiji to Los Angeles for emergency surgery. This type of service made all the travel arrangements and paid for her husband’s 1-week hotel stay while out of state from Austin.
What amazes me is that now you can plan and book travel with no human intervention by simply clicking on web sites and paying electronically. Next time I’ll share tech tips about working remotely. Do you have any global travel planning tips to share? Would love to hear your thoughts on working remotely.
