Can Mindfulness Make You a Better Business Travel Manager?

The benefits of mindfulness for travel managers can help you better serve your travelers while boosting your own level of job satisfaction.

We’re all looking for ways to get better at what we do, but did you know that mindfulness for travel managers is a great way to gain an edge?

Your work as a travel manager is chaotic at times. There are plans to be made, people to connect with and fires to put out. The days can be long and taxing, and they can also place a strain on your mental and physical health.

Organizations like Google and even the U.S. Army are now using a proven method for keeping employees happy, healthy and effective. In simplest terms, it’s called “mindfulness.” Here’s a look at how mindfulness for travel managers can improve your health and change your perspective on work.

What is Mindfulness?

Booking.com and JTB Business Travel have addressed mindfulness in a new ebook titled “Can Mindfulness Make You a Better Business Travel Manager”? The ebook defines mindfulness as “focusing your thoughts on the present and simply observing what is going on.” But the key is this: To be mindful, focus and observe without passing judgment.

You can read more about mindfulness and its definition by downloading the ebook. But know that practicing mindfulness and focusing your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations can unlock a range of benefits for you in your work.

The Benefits of Mindfulness for Travel Managers

What exactly are the benefits of mindfulness for travel managers? This ebook outlines 10 ways that mindfulness can specifically help travel managers in their work:

1. Improving Your Self-Relationship

Observing thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations without judgment can help you learn and notice things about yourself that perhaps you’ve never noticed before. Specifically, mindfulness makes you more aware of self-criticism and ways to overcome anxiety.

2. Improving Relationships With Others

Mindfulness heightens your appreciation of others and helps you manage your expectations in a healthy way. In short, mindfulness helps you develop empathy, which can often be lacking in the workplace.

3. Coping With Stress

Yes, the days can be long and stressful, as noted above. But mindfulness can help you to forget about past mistakes and future concerns so that you can focus on the present in a calm and tranquil way.

4. Improving Focus

Mindfulness exercises are known to help you focus for longer periods of time on small details. With greater focus comes greater clarity.

5. Boosting Creativity

After doing the work of a travel manager for months and years, it naturally becomes harder to open yourself up to new ideas and objective solutions. Mindfulness helps to boost creativity and open up your thinking around new ideas and options.

6. Strengthening Neural Connections

When you practice mindfulness meditation, you actually start to rewire your brain so that it becomes more focused and more stress-resistant.

7. Improving Memory

The brain’s extreme short-term memory is known as “working memory.” When you forget something that’s on the tip of your tongue, your working memory has misfired. Mindfulness helps to strengthen working memory and to help you keep and piece together more information in your head at once.

8. Stabilizing Mood

Mindfulness can help you exist and work in your environment, even when it’s filled with distractions. Mindfulness exercises can make you less rattled and less irritable, stabilizing your mood and freeing you up to do your best work.

9. Making Confident Decisions

As mindfulness reduces your anxieties, it also helps you make decisions with more confidence. In simple terms, mindfulness helps you to roll with punches and to stress less.

10. Lengthening Life

Research indicates that mindfulness helps to reduce your body’s inflammatory response, which means your body is less prone to all kinds of illnesses. Over time, this reduction can actually extend your lifespan.

Need More Support for Your Work?

Mindfulness is a great place to start if you’re a travel manager enduring chaotic days. But you may also need professional support to best serve your company and its business travelers.

At JTB Business Travel, we are a comprehensive corporate travel agency that offers a range of services to companies large and small. Behind every service we offer and every recommendation we make is a common sense approach to business travel.

Contact us to learn more about how we can support you in your role.