Travel talk

BUSINESS TRIPS: If your job involves a lot of travel, it may seem as if you’re wasting time in airports and airport lounges. Yet seasoned business travellers use the time before and during flights to make valuable contacts.

Alex Cheatle, CEO of the concierge service Ten UK, found a new business partner when his flight from Athens to London was delayed. “We got talking about an article he was reading in the newspaper, and then we started talking about my plans,” Cheatle told The Wall Street Journal. “All of a sudden we were problem-solving, talking about new markets, and by the time we got to London we had laid out a business plan.”

Cheatle has no worries about talking to others about his ideas. “I am always telling people what I want to do because something might come out of it. It’s very intentional,” he says.

Andrea Viganò, deputy CEO for the asset management firm BlackRock Inc in Italy, travels frequently between London, Milan and Rome. He takes the first flight in the morning and uses the time before the flight to have coffee and chat with other business people. “Sharing the first flight in the morning, it’s a good business card,” Viganò says. “It’s a good demonstration that you don’t waste your time. At the same time, with the last flight from Milan to London, you can have an aperitif in the lounge in a relaxed atmosphere.”

"You have two hours' time to talk business." Andrea Viganò

Viganò claims that 20 per cent of his first business contacts have been made with people he met while catching the first or last flight of the day. “You can have two hours of time to talk business,” he adds.

British architect John McAslan keeps his eyes and ears open when on holiday. In 2007, he and his family were in Nairobi when they saw a young man busily writing emails in the hotel lobby. “He looked like somebody who was on a mission,” McAslan says. Later, they saw the man again and learned that he headed the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative in Africa, part of the Clinton Global Initiative, a charity set up by former US President Bill Clinton.

“He then invited me to New York and the relationship built from there. I ended up designing new schools in Malawi for a project they have there,” McAslan explains. “It wasn’t planned. It just happened.”