These days, enterprise journey now not means placing your life on maintain. In my very own work as a journey author, eternally shuttling between airports and resort lobbies, I lean on small habits that make unfamiliar locations really feel much less nameless. Before work takes over, I’ll placed on a Greek or Arabic podcast to maintain the languages of my household near me. They’re those I grew up listening to across the dinner desk, and there’s a quiet concern they’ll slip away if I cease listening. Folding moments like these into my work day retains me current—and extra rooted in my private life—amid the movement.
I’m hardly the one one stitching items of dwelling into life on the highway. As of March 2025, practically a quarter of US employees work remotely part-time, and greater than half of enterprise journeys thread work and leisure collectively. Given that enterprise journey reached $1.5 trillion globally final 12 months, it’s protected to say that our carry-on suitcases at the moment are our transportable properties. But dwelling on the highway does not imply having to press pause on our lives and passions, in accordance with the enterprise vacationers expertly making time throughout layovers, flights, and overnights for his or her private habits and grounding rituals.
Alex Green
For Jon Sáenz Madrazo, a local of Bilbao and the worldwide model president of Kiehl’s, that appears like stealing an hour, wherever he wakes up, to attract in his sketchpad earlier than the day gathers velocity. Sometimes it’s a barista’s fingers mid-pour, generally a meme-worthy movie star second that begs for caricature. “That’s my meditation,” he says. The drawings not often go away his pocket book, however they orient him—a private follow that travels lighter than any suitcase. The routine might be interpersonal too: Aaron Kithcart, a medical director at Regeneron who spend weeks hopscotching between labs and conferences so far as Tokyo, treats dwelling much less like a hard and fast place than a each day touchstone: a fast FaceTime that overlaps his post-wake espresso along with his husband’s bedtime whisky again dwelling. “That little habit shrinks the distance,” he says. Time zones might shift, however the routine stays.
“There are always surprises [on the road], so I carve out time for myself,” says Kelly Wearstler, the design eye behind Proper Hotels, who might need a mint tea earlier than mattress or a double macchiato earlier than daybreak; or apply face oils that inform her physique it’s morning or midnight—small contact factors that carry a whiff of life at dwelling, hold the beat of 1’s inside rhythm, and make a resort room really feel much less borrowed. Christa Cotton, the New Orleans-based founding father of El Guapo Bitters, takes an analogous tack. Wherever she touches down, she unpacks totally, even when she’s passed by morning, then lights a votive candle—from her own brand, after all—and walks a neighborhood grocery aisle. (“Even unfamiliar shelves can spark my next million dollar idea,” she says.) And for Mauricio Umansky, founder and CEO of The Agency, a worldwide luxurious actual property brokerage, a health routine is the important thing: He packs a leap rope wherever he goes, and stretches with resistance bands between calls. Even a totally populated Netflix queue—a lot of which he’ll nod off to, he admits—is a part of a routine designed to carry him regular, wherever enterprise takes him. All this, Umansky says, “helps me feel human.”
Alex Green
That intuition for ritual can be felt by individuals within the tourism business working behind the scenes to satisfy vacationers’ evolving wants. Tim Harrington, who shapes boutique accommodations alongside Maine’s coastline for Atlantic Hospitality, begins every reservation with what he calls a “pre-concierge,” the place he fine-tunes particulars earlier than a visitor even drops a bag. Cottages pivot into studios; pool cabanas double as convention rooms. When a touring musician wanted a recording setup final minute, Harrington’s staff pulled a classic desk and some worn lamps from their warehouse and rebuilt a bunk room right into a makeshift sound sales space by nightfall.