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Mobilities
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Business Travel from the Travellers

Perspective: Stress, Stimulation and
Normalization
Per Gustafson

Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University,

Uppsala, Sweden.
Published online: 11 Apr 2013.

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To cite this article: Per Gustafson (2014) Business Travel from the Travellers Perspective: Stress,
Stimulation and Normalization, Mobilities, 9:1, 63-83, DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2013.784539
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Mobilities, 2014
Vol. 9, No. 1, 6383, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2013.784539

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Business Travel from the Travellers

Perspective: Stress, Stimulation and
Normalization
PER GUSTAFSON
Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

ABSTRACT For growing numbers of businesspeople, managers and public ofcials, work
involves travel. This study investigates what business travel means to travellers. What are
their experiences of travel and what are the consequences of travel for their professional
and personal lives? Qualitative interviews with frequent business travellers and corporate
travel managers show that travel may be both stressful and stimulating. It may be associated
with physical and psychological strain, increased workloads and difculties in balancing
work and private life, but also with enriching experiences, social and professional status
and a cosmopolitan identity. It may also promote travellers professional careers. However,
in some respects, an ongoing normalization of travel seems to have moderating effects on
both stress and stimulation among travellers. This normalization occurs on three different
levels: the societal, organizational and individual.
KEY WORDS: Business travel, Normalization, Stress, Careers, Mobility capital

Introduction
The past few decades have witnessed a considerable increase in business travel,
especially among managers and professionals (Doyle and Nathan 2001; Davidson
and Cope 2003). Economic and political globalization, growing numbers of multiunit companies, and organizational trends towards work in project teams as well as
more intense inter-rm cooperation have increased the need for communication and
interaction between people working in different locations. Improved infrastructures
for mobility and deregulation of air travel have further fuelled the growth of
business travel (Aguilra 2008; Millar and Salt 2008; Beaverstock et al. 2009).
Expanding business travel has consequences in several areas. The global value of
business travel expenditure is estimated at around USD 900 billion annually,

Correspondence Address: Per Gustafson, Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden. Email: per.gustafson@ibf.uu.se
2014 Taylor & Francis

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P. Gustafson

making it an important industry worldwide (World Travel and Tourism Council

2011). Employers are becoming aware of the importance of business travel, and
other forms of work-related mobility, to work organization and corporate costs.
The growth of business travel has therefore been accompanied by increasing professionalization of corporate travel management, especially in large companies with
extensive international travel (Lubbe 2003; Holma 2009; Gustafson 2012a).
Business travel also has consequences for the traveller. Research on working conditions, work organization and occupational health has mainly investigated travelrelated stress due to poor working conditions, heavy workloads and absence from
home and family (Fisher and Stoneman 1998; Espino et al. 2002; Ivancevich,
Konopaske, and DeFrank 2003). More recent studies, often inspired by mobility
research, have introduced new perspectives on business travel by treating travel as
an important activity in its own right, by examining the individual and organizational rationales underlying travel and other business-related mobilities, and by
exploring how such mobilities depend on, but also produce and reproduce, various
resources and abilities (Millar and Salt 2008; Beaverstock et al. 2009; Kesselring
and Vogl 2010). This research has revealed a broader range of consequences
beyond stress and strain. Positive experiences such as a sense of personal development (Welch and Worm 2006), respite from the normality of everyday life, work
and family obligations (Westman, Etzion, and Chen 2009), and lifestyle and identity
issues (Lassen 2010) are suggestive of the need for a more nuanced understanding
of the personal implications of work-related mobility.
This study investigates business travel from the travellers perspective. Qualitative
interviews explore what travel means to frequent business travellers and the tangible
consequences of travel for travellers personal and professional lives. The study thus
contributes to research on mobility and business travel in three important ways.
First, it demonstrates the multiple meanings and consequences frequent business travel may have. Earlier studies have primarily focussed on one or a few aspects,
while the full range of implications has rarely been acknowledged and examined.
Second, drawing on mobility research and the concept of mobility capital, the
study highlights the fact that intense travel requires resources, but also that travellers may acquire or gain access to resources by travelling. In particular, it identies
a number of mechanisms through which business travel may promote travellers
professional careers. Third, the study develops the concept of normalization, also
derived from mobility research. The interviews show that business travel may be
trying and stressful in some ways, yet stimulating and rewarding in others. In
certain respects, however, both stress and stimulation seem to be moderated by an
ongoing normalization of travel. This normalization occurs on three different levels:
the societal, organizational and individual.
Working Conditions and Business Travel Stress
Business travel today is an important form of mobility and an important part of
work for many employees, both in private companies and in public sector organizations (Doyle and Nathan 2001; Welch and Worm 2006; Faulconbridge et al. 2009).
Until recently, however, business travel and its implications for travellers have
received relatively little attention in the literature. To begin with, research on work
organization and working conditions has produced a limited body of research on

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Business Travel from the Travellers Perspective

65

the impact of frequent business travel, often emphasizing the stressful aspects of
travel.
Key insights from this research are summarized by Ivancevich, Konopaske, and
DeFrank (2003), who suggest a theoretical model for understanding how travel may
contribute to work-related stress (see also DeFrank, Konopaske, and Ivancevich
2000). For individual travellers, the model distinguishes between pre-trip, duringtrip and post-trip stressors, moderators of stress and potential outcomes. In short,
travel-related stressors include delegating work to others and making home arrangements before the journey, personal safety concerns, accumulated work at the home
ofce, travel delays and other unexpected incidents during the journey, as well as
unmet family responsibilities. Potentially negative outcomes range from anxiety and
frustration, fatigue and physical or mental health problems, to job dissatisfaction,
poor work performance, absenteeism and the desire to quit. According to the model,
these effects may be moderated by social and managerial support, travel arrangements and individual personality traits (Ivancevich, Konopaske, and DeFrank 2003).
Ivancevich and colleagues do not provide systematic empirical evidence for their
model, but the relationship between business travel and stress has been shown in
several other studies (Fisher and Stoneman 1998; Welch and Worm 2006; Westman,
Etzion, and Chen 2009). Workfamily conict is often particularly problematic. The
absence from home may cause stress and psychosocial problems in both travellers
and their families (Striker, Dimberg, and Liese 2000; Espino et al. 2002; Black and
Jamieson 2007). Several studies indicate that travel may be more stressful for
women than for men and that women are more likely to restrict their business travel
due to family obligations (Gustafson 2006; Bergstrm Casinowsky 2013). Stress
related to tight airline connections, missed connections, lost luggage and so forth,
as well as a range of health and safety concerns, are also reported (Welch and
Worm 2006). Moreover, travel is often associated with long working hours and
heavy workloads both during journeys and on return to the ofce as
well as with difcult working conditions (Doyle and Nathan 2001; Espino et al.
2002; Gustafson 2012b).
In a few cases, research on work and working conditions has acknowledged that
travel may also have positive implications for the traveller. For example, Westman,
Etzion, and Chen (2009) have shown how travel may offer respite from everyday
obligations both at home and at work, and Welch and Worm (2006) have highlighted experiences of variety, novelty, thrill and personal development in conjunction with business travel. Yet the predominant impression given by the research in
this eld is that frequent business travel causes stress and strain, with potentially
harmful consequences for travellers and their families. The focus of this research on
managerial implications and ways of moderating travel-related stress is a strength,
but the consequent focus on the negative effects of travel is also a limitation.
Mobility Research and Business Travel
Research inspired by the mobilities turn may broaden the perspective in several
respects. Over the past decade, the work of Urry and colleagues has established
mobility as a eld of both theoretical and empirical interest to social scientists by
showing how different forms of mobility are shaping social life and social organization (Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2007). A
number of insights from mobility research are useful for understanding and

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P. Gustafson

investigating contemporary business travel (Faulconbridge et al. 2009; Kesselring

and Vogl 2010).
On a macro-level, mobility research suggests a broad concept of mobility,
including not only physical travel but also mobilities enabled by, for example,
telephone communication, video conferencing, email and the Internet. It highlights
how social organization and interaction depend on an interplay between corporeal
and technologically mediated mobilities (Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006; Urry
2007). Scholars inspired by this approach have analysed business travel and other
forms of work-related mobility and communication within a framework of corporate ecologies or portfolios of mobility (Millar and Salt 2008; Faulconbridge
et al. 2009).
However, in spite of these new mediated forms of communication, mobility
research has remained attentive to the vital role of physical co-presence and faceto-face encounters. For example, Urry (2003) elaborates on the networked character of contemporary sociality and on the intrinsic qualities of face-to-face interaction
that necessitate personal meetings and, as a consequence, travel. These insights are
echoed in several studies looking at why businesspeople travel and in what ways
international companies depend on geographically dispersed face-to-face interaction
within and outside the organization (e.g. Jones 2007; Aguilra 2008; Wickham and
Vecchi 2008).
On the level of individual experience, mobility research asserts the non-trivial
nature of travel. Travel is not just a means to reach a destination, but an important
activity in itself (Urry 2007). Travel may be more or less comfortable and convenient for the traveller depending on the means of transport, travel schedule, accommodation and other practical circumstances. Travel also involves spending time on
the road, and the experience of travel may differ greatly depending on the opportunities to pursue meaningful activities while travelling (Lyons and Urry 2005). Such
factors are particularly important for frequent business travellers, who may spend
considerable time in air cabins, airport lounges, railway carriages and hotel rooms.
Importantly, their travel experiences involve not only stress and strain, but also
stimulation and relaxation (Brown and OHara 2003; Holley, Jain, and Lyons 2008;
Gustafson 2012b).
Moreover, mobility researchers have taken a lively interest in the relationship
between spatial and social mobility, and thus, how mobility is interrelated with
power, resources and social inequality (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004; Jensen
2011). When theorizing this relationship, scholars have used the concept of mobility capital (e.g. Scott 2006; Faulconbridge et al. 2009) or similar concepts such as
mobility competence (Kesselring and Vogl 2010) or network capital (Larsen,
Urry, and Axhausen 2006; Urry 2007). Importantly, there are two sides to mobility
capital. First, the concepts point out that travel requires resources. Mobile persons
must have certain physical abilities, access to transport and communication infrastructures, knowledge of how to use these infrastructures and the economic means
to do so; they must also have a legal status (passport, visas) that allows mobility
(Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006; Urry 2007). They must be able to plan and
administrate their travel as well as to coordinate and negotiate their mobility with
family and friends (Bergstrm 2010; Bergstrm Casinowsky 2013). Yet another
aspect is organizational or institutional resources. For example, business travellers
often travel within an organizational setting made up of corporate travel regulations

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Business Travel from the Travellers Perspective

67

and routines, support from travel agency personnel, integrated online booking tools,
and so forth (Gustafson 2012a).
Second, the concept of mobility capital highlights the fact that mobile persons
acquire new resources, abilities and opportunities owing to their mobility (Findlay
et al. 2006; Scott 2006; Brooks and Waters 2010). This aspect is of particular
importance in relation to working life and work-related mobilities. The experiences,
skills and orientations gained from mobility may be highly valued by employers
and thus promote the travellers professional career (Oddou, Mendenhall, and
Ritchie 2000; Scott 2006). Travel may also give access to broader social networks
(Bergstrm 2010; Gustafson 2009), and certain forms of business travel may, in
addition, be associated with social status (Thurlow and Jaworski 2006) and promote
an attractive cosmopolitan identity and lifestyle (Lassen 2010). There is, however,
little research on travellers thoughts about these different aspects of mobility
capital.
A nal conceptual theme, which will be further elaborated below in the analysis
and conclusion, is the normalization of travel. In a recent study, Kesselring and
Vogl (2010) argue that business travel is currently undergoing a process of normalization and rationalization, which tends to eliminate the stimulating and rewarding
aspects of travel. Previously, business travel was often regarded as a privilege and
an indication that the traveller was an important and trusted employee. Today, as
more and more employees are expected to travel, it has rather become a banal, routine activity, and employers demands for mobility are often perceived more as a
burden than a reward. Moreover, business travel is increasingly subject to corporate
cost control and regulations (Gustafson 2012a), which further undermine the feeling
of privilege and distinction. For Kesselring and Vogl (2010), normalization therefore
signies more stress, less stimulation and intensied exploitation of mobile workers.
However, this study suggests that the normalization of travel is a more multifaceted
process, which takes place on several levels and may have both positive and
negative consequences for travellers.
Data and Method
The study draws on interviews with business travellers and corporate travel managers in 12 Swedish work organizations. Organizations were selected from among
those whose travel managers were members of the Swedish Business Travel Association. The selection of organizations aimed at variation, as employees in different
types of organizations may travel for different reasons and under different circumstances and therefore experience their travelling differently. The sample thus
included both public authorities and private companies in different sectors (including services, trade and manufacturing), and the organizations also differed in terms
of size, travel volumes and travel patterns.
Semi-structured interviews were used to ensure that a number of important issues
were covered in all interviews, but also to provide opportunities for respondents to
bring up issues the interviewer had not considered (Flick 2002). Interviews thus
took the form of conversations in which the interviewer asked open-ended questions
and follow-up questions within relatively broad pre-dened areas, as outlined below.
Initially, these areas and questions were inspired by previous research and theory.
But the interviewer was also attentive to new, unexpected issues that might emerge
during the interviews and prepared to follow-up on such issues if they seemed rele-

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P. Gustafson

vant to the study aim. As a consequence, the interview contents evolved to some
extent over time, as new interesting questions were added and less fruitful questions
were abandoned, although the general areas remained the same (Layder 1998).
First, the travel manager of each organization was interviewed. They were asked
questions about their role as travel managers, about the organizations travel
activity, about travel policy and travel regulations and about attitudes towards travel
in the organization. Second, travel managers were asked to recruit two or a few
frequent business travellers in their organizations for separate interviews. Some had
difculties recruiting others, but in the end, interviews were conducted with 22 travellers from 11 of the 12 organizations. The selection of travellers thus largely
depended on the travel managers. Still, efforts were made to achieve variation in
the sample, mainly with regard to sex, family situation and reasons for travelling,
as previous research has suggested that these factors may be associated with different experiences of frequent travel. The sample of travellers included 10 women and
12 men, mostly managers and professionals, ranging in age from 28 to 58 years.
They travelled from 25 up to around 180 days a year, and most of them had been
travelling intensely for several years. The travellers were asked about how and why
they travelled, about their experiences, strategies and opinions with regard to business travel, and about the consequences of travel for their professional and personal
life. Interviews generally lasted between one and two hours.
The analyses presented here are primarily based on interviews with travellers.
Travel manager interviews are used as complements when relevant. Transcripts
were coded and analysed thematically. Initial coding mainly used the pre-dened
themes from the interviews; subsequent coding and analysis developed themes and
sub-themes in an interplay between the empirical data and existing research and theory (Layder 1998; Strauss and Corbin 1998). The most important analytical themes
that emerged from this process, with regard to travellers experiences of frequent
travel, are presented in the following sections. Quotations have been translated from
Swedish and anonymized with regard to both individual identities and
organizations.
The study was designed to promote an in-depth understanding of frequent business travellers experiences of travel and to capture qualitative variation in such
experiences. The analysis also revealed a number of factors that may help to
explain this variation, and these will be briey summarized in the conclusion of the
paper. However, the purpose was not to investigate in detail how different types or
categories of travellers differed in their experiences of travel. Such an analysis
would have required a larger sample and a more quantitative research design.
The Practice of Travel
Business travel is not an end in itself, but a means to perform work at the
destination. Yet for frequent travellers, travel as an activity or practice also becomes
an important part of their work. The interviews clearly show that travel requires
knowledge and ability and may be associated with both positive and negative
experiences.
On the positive side, some of the interviewees described how they appreciated
specic aspects of the travel experience, such as the comfort of business-class travel, the international atmosphere of big airports, or the opportunity to relax and

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Business Travel from the Travellers Perspective

69

enjoy a long-distance ight when there was no need to work during the journey.
However, the predominant attitudes towards the practice of travel were negative.
To begin with, the journey itself may be stressful in a number of ways
(Ivancevich, Konopaske, and DeFrank 2003). Interviewees were concerned about
missing the ight, about delays and missed connections, about overbookings and
lost luggage, about booked taxis that never turned up, and other practical problems
on the road. They were frustrated with security controls, inefcient check-in
routines, waiting times at airports and poor information about trafc disruptions.
They complained about uncomfortable aircraft seats, loud-voiced mobile phone
users and over-charging taxi drivers.
Health and safety concerns were another recurrent theme in the interviews. Travellers felt tired because travelling meant early mornings, late evenings, intense
working days, sleeping difculties, and sometimes jet lag. Some interviewees were
concerned about colds and coughs, infections, skin problems or circulatory disturbances, which they suspected were related to frequent air travel. They reported that
travel often meant fewer opportunities for physical exercise, poor eating habits and
in some cases over-consumption of alcohol. These factors, one female traveller
argued, added to other stressful conditions associated with business travel:
Traveller: You eat less healthy food, you get less physical exercise. You sleep
in beds that are not your own, which means that sometimes theyre ne,
sometimes you have a pain in your back for the next three weeks. And then
theres more stress. I think its bad for your health to travel a lot.
Interviewer: OK. More stress, in what way?
Traveller: You need to be on time, I mean, there are a lot of times to keep
when you travel. [...] Plus theres a lot of work that doesnt get done when
you travel. So travel often brings about more stress.
With regard to personal safety, at least those interviewees who often travelled
abroad were aware of safety issues in relation to travel. Some admitted to being
uneasy about ying; a few had been involved in minor incidents. Several interviewees also described precautionary measures, such as avoiding certain airlines, taking a taxi (preferably booked in advance) rather than walking, checking emergency
exits at the hotel, not carrying valuables, and avoiding visible logotypes that
identied their employer.
Travelling for business often means travelling alone. The interviewees had mixed
feelings about this. Some complained about loneliness and boredom when travelling
without company, spending lonely nights at the hotel and having dinner alone. In
addition, at least in certain destinations, female travellers could feel exposed or
insecure if they left the hotel or went to a restaurant alone. Other interviewees attitudes were more positive. Travelling alone may give a sense of freedom and also
enable those who wish to work during the journey to do so. Moreover, being alone
at the hotel room, watching TV and relaxing may give time for restoration or
respite from everyday work and family obligations (cf. Westman, Etzion, and
Chen 2009).
Importantly, individual experiences of travel differed considerably, and not all the
stressors enumerated above were experienced by all travellers. On the contrary,

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travellers often developed strategies for reducing travel-related stress and inconveniences on the road. The interviews provide numerous examples of respondents
ability to choose the right airline, the right connection and the right seat, spend as
little time as possible at the airport, travel with as little luggage as possible, and so
forth. Such travel competence appears as an important form of mobility capital
a kind of resource, derived from experience and practice that enables or facilitates
mobility. It might even be a source of pride and contribute to the professional
identity of frequent business travellers:
When youve been travelling as long as I have, I mean Ive been doing this
more or less for 23 years, then you develop a routine. You know what airlines
to use, you know the airports, you nd your way around, you dont need to
be there a long time in advance, and you kind of know how to slip through
the security control. [...] Arlanda airport is a classic example. I hardly ever y
from terminal 5 nowadays. I avoid it, because the check-in queues are terrible.
[...] If you travel with Fly Nordic instead, from terminal 2, youre through in
three minutes. Perfect!
The practice of business travel often goes unnoticed, both in research and in managerial practice, as both researchers and managers tend to be more interested in the
work people do than in where they do it and how they get there (Faulconbridge
et al. 2009; Welch and Worm 2006). For frequent business travellers, however,
travel is not an invisible, effortless getting there, but an important practice in its
own right. It is a part of their work that is experienced corporeally, emotionally and
intellectually and that may contribute to both stress and stimulation. In certain
respects, travel may become less stressful as seasoned travellers develop travel
competence, but when travel becomes a routine it may also lose some of the
meanings that initially made it stimulating. This paradox will be discussed at more
length in the section on normalization.
Travel and Work
Travel may also have signicant consequences for the work situation, workload and
working conditions of frequent travellers. On the positive side, the interviewees
generally felt that travelling enabled them to do a good job to have high-quality
meetings, to gain inuence in negotiations, to build trust and develop professional
networks and therefore made their work more stimulating. Moreover, they appreciated the opportunities travel gave them to work in different places and countries
and to meet with people from different cultures. Such experiences were perceived
as enriching, both personally and professionally:
Of course its a good thing to see other cities and places and countries, to
meet with and work with different cultures. Thats exciting and enriching for
me as a person. The negative side is that you have to get there, the travelling
itself. But I really appreciate having the opportunity to visit these places, meet
these people and work across cultures. The work Im doing, its really a
positive thing for me.

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Business Travel from the Travellers Perspective

71

Interviewees working in big organizations also said that travelling and working with
colleagues from other places and countries made them feel part of the organization
as a whole. It helped them to see their work in a broader perspective and promoted
a kind of corporate identity.
But travel may also make work more stressful (Ivancevich, Konopaske, and
DeFrank 2003). Interviewees often associated travel with intense work and long
working hours. They described having all-day meetings and then spending their
evenings travelling, working at the hotel, or having a business dinner with clients
or colleagues. Travel time was frequently used as working time, as travellers needed
to prepare meetings as well as make notes and do various kinds of follow-up work
after meetings. In addition, most interviewees tried to answer email (and sometimes
voice mail) while travelling to avoid having an excessive workload when they
returned from the journey.
For many frequent travellers, hotel rooms, airport lounges, air cabins and railway
carriages thus become workplaces that supplement their ordinary ofces (Holley,
Jain, and Lyons 2008). These workplaces sometimes offer rather poor working conditions. The interviewees repeatedly voiced their complaints about, for example,
useless waiting times at airports, cramped seats, disturbance from other passengers
and unreliable Internet connections. The presence of other passengers in trains and
planes also limits opportunities to work with sensitive information, as several
respondents pointed out.
However, some travellers appreciated the working conditions during their journeys and felt that travel provided valuable working time. Several interviewees
described how they found time for undisturbed reading, thinking or computer work
during long-distance journeys. One traveller described himself as a fully
digitalized mobile worker, carrying all his work with him in his laptop rather than
collecting papers on his ofce desk; he was therefore able to work very efciently
while travelling:
Some people feel that travel consumes a lot of their time. For me its quite
the opposite. I get a lot of work done when Im on a business trip. That may
sound like a paradox, but thats how it is. I think Im least efcient when I sit
here at the ofce between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., because then there are so many
interruptions. There are phone calls about all kinds of trivial things and a
steady ow of people who come to talk about this or that. Very nice from a
social point of view, but not very efcient. But when I travel, I can really
focus and concentrate.
An interesting observation was that employers often supplied their travellers with
the equipment they needed to work on the road, such as laptops with wireless Internet connections, mobile phones and BlackBerries, but made no explicit demands
about work during travel time (cf. Gustafson 2012b). Instead, employers largely left
it to the travellers themselves to decide whether or not they needed to work while
travelling. One reason for this is probably that formal regulation of work during travel time would raise awkward questions about managerial control and about the
employers responsibility with regard to work environment and working conditions
on the road (Allvin and Aronsson 2003). Travellers, too, tended to discuss the use
of travel time in terms of their own choice and their own responsibility and
expressed no desire for more regulation in this regard. The interviews suggest that

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P. Gustafson

the lack of regulation gave travellers a sense of freedom and independence that
made stressful travel and heavy workloads somewhat easier to bear. Business travellers ability to organize their work in time and space and to make their own decisions about how to use their travel time emerges as yet another aspect of mobility
capital.

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Travel, Family and Private Life

The most stressful consequences of frequent business travel are often related to
balancing work and private life, and particularly to travellers family relations
(Espino et al. 2002; Black and Jamieson 2007). In this study, 16 of the 22 travellers
were married or cohabiting, and 12 had children living at home. Dual-earner
couples were the rule, and in some cases, respondents partners also travelled in
their work.
Interviewees with families often felt that travel affected their family life, as it
involved early mornings, late evenings and nights spent away from home. This
required planning, preparation and coordination at home, and sometimes negotiations with the partner. One frequent traveller, whose wife also travelled as part of
her work, described their situation:
We coordinate our agendas six months ahead to decide who will bring the kid
to and from the daycare centre. Its an enormous puzzle.
Both male and female travellers generally described how they and their partners
tried to divide household-related tasks more or less equally, although some of the
women felt they still had the main responsibility (cf. Bergstrm Casinowsky 2013).
Thus, travellers who spent a great deal of time away from home might feel that
they did not do their part of the household work and that they had to make up for
this upon return. Moreover, frequent travel was sometimes associated with feelings
of separation and loneliness, both among travellers and their families. Taken
together, these factors made travel more stressful and might even be detrimental to
family relations.
For these reasons, travellers often tried to adapt their travelling in order to protect
their family life and manage their family responsibilities. Some interviewees had
not started travelling until their children had grown up. Others tried, for family reasons, to restrict their travel activity or arrange their travel in ways that reduced
stress for the family. Strategies included planning journeys a long time ahead and
avoiding ad hoc trips, combining several meetings during one journey in order to
reduce the number of trips, using telephone or web meetings as a substitute for certain types of meetings that would require travel, adapting travel schedules to morning or evening family routines, avoiding very distant destinations, and spending as
few nights as possible away from home. For travellers with partners and children,
the ability to manage the travelfamily interface by planning, negotiating and
modifying their travel behaviour was clearly an important form of mobility capital.
At times, however, more radical and painful adaptations might be necessary, such
as changing work tasks, declining promotion, or even taking on a new job. One
interviewee had left her previous work as a consultant to reduce the level of
stressful travel:

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I wanted to know how much travel [the new job] involved and what destinations. My children were even younger three years ago, and I didnt want to be
away to such an extent that my private, family life would suffer. So I felt that
the Nordic countries, OK, ne. Copenhagen and Oslo, no problem. Japan,
China, no thanks. Ive done that. Fun, interesting, hard work, but not in
combination with small children. [...] And today I schedule my own travel. I
own my agenda, unlike when I worked as a management consultant and had no
control at all.
Travellers often felt that their travelling encroached on both working time and
leisure time. This made them highly aware of how they spent their time and incited
them to use time efciently. Interviewees often described working hard and concentrating on their work during working time, while protecting their non-working time
against work-related intrusions in order to spend quality time with their families.
The perceived loss of useful time due to travel thus produced an intensication of
both working time and family time.
Frequent travel also restricts the time available for social and leisure activities.
Travellers with a family tended to prioritize their families when they returned from
a business trip and had little time left for more distant relatives and friends. In addition, travelling and spending evenings and nights away from home made it difcult
for many interviewees to participate in collective activities, such as social events
with friends or organized leisure activities:
Its difcult to have activities at regular times. Like playing badminton every
Thursday afternoon, that doesnt work. [...] Being a trainer for a football team,
that doesnt work. So you avoid getting involved in such activities. Thats a
choice you make, not to participate in things on a regular basis.
Yet the implications of travel for the interviewees private and family lives were not
entirely negative. Travel may give opportunities to see friends who live at the destination, and interviewees who regularly travelled to the same place might gradually
develop personal friendships with colleagues working there. Also, depending on
destinations and timing, travellers could occasionally combine business trips with
leisure activities or a holiday, alone or with their families.
Travel and Careers
In an increasingly mobile working life, travel and other forms of mobility may be
important for career opportunities and career advancement (Oddou, Mendenhall,
and Ritchie 2000). This brings up theoretical questions about the relationship
between spatial and social mobility, and about the potentially mediating role of certain forms of mobility capital (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004; Larsen, Urry,
and Axhausen 2006). On a general level, employees who want to have a career
need to do a good job, and in order to do a good job they sometimes need to travel.
In addition, the interviews revealed a number of more specic mechanisms through
which travel may promote travellers professional careers.
To begin with, willingness to travel may signify work commitment. It shows
current and potential employers that employees are able and willing to work hard,
to spend time away from home and family, and that they have ambition:

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P. Gustafson
By travelling, I send out a signal that Im mobile and that Im exible. I
denitely believe thats an advantage in terms of career opportunities.

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Several interviewees also pointed out that travel made them more visible, within
their own organizations as well as in relation to external partners, and that their
travelling allowed them to develop and maintain extensive professional networks.
Both these aspects were considered important in opening up new career opportunities. As one respondent put it, when asked whether her international travel might be
benecial to her career:
Traveller: Yes, because I get much greater exposure. In that respect its an
advantage.
Interviewer: What do you mean by exposure?
Traveller: Exposure to more people, I build up a much bigger network. More
people know me, I know more people. If you only work in Sweden your
network is more limited.
Moreover, travel allows travellers to learn, gain experience and develop new
abilities. As they meet and work with people from other places, they acquire new
professional skills and valuable practical work-related experience, and this may in
turn promote their careers. International travel also provides knowledge of other
cultures and experience of working in cross-cultural settings. This involves the
development of what Oddou, Mendenhall, and Ritchie (2000) describe as global
mindsets an ability to understand different viewpoints, to see things from different perspectives and to manage uncertainty. Such qualities are important to career
advancement, especially in international organizations:
Being able to travel, thats good for your career. Not the travel itself [...] but
what youre doing in these other places is good for your career. That you get
used to working in other cultures, in other countries, in different languages, in
other parts of the company all those things. Not staying in the small comfort
zone around your desk, but making your way in the world, so to speak.
Many employers in the study regarded travel and mobility as positive factors.
Mobile employees, one respondent said, were more useful than those who were not
willing to travel. In higher positions, travel aimed at developing and maintaining
relations within and beyond the organization was often necessary for performing
the job. Being willing to travel thus gave access to a wider range of interesting job
opportunities. Several large corporations in the study explicitly encouraged people
to move around in the organization and gain experience from different units.
Employees who wished to reach senior management positions were sometimes also
expected, or even required, to undertake expatriate assignments (cf. Millar and Salt
2008). In sum, both the ability and willingness to travel and the personal qualities
and orientations that travellers are presumed to develop by travelling may contribute
to professional advancement. Travellers as well as employers in the study were
clearly aware of the importance of these two interrelated aspects of mobility capital.

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However, several interviewees pointed out that the relationship between travel
and careers looks different in different organizations and for different employees.
Certainly not all travellers think of their own travel as a career strategy and not all
kinds of travel are career-promoting. The travel activity of high-level managers also
varied owing to differences in organizational design and culture. In some organizations, managers were expected to travel a great deal in order to stay in contact with
geographically dispersed units; in other organizations, important meetings were normally held at corporate headquarters, the assumption being that senior managers
would be there rather than travelling around. In the latter case, career advancement
might result in less travel.
Travel, Status and Identity
Business travel may also have implications for the travellers identity. Two different
aspects appeared in the interviews. One concerned professional identity and status;
the other concerned the travellers possible identication as a mobile, cosmopolitan
individual.
In the marketing of the business travel industry, business travel is often associated
with a certain amount of glamour and prestige, as well as with both professional
and social status (Thurlow and Jaworski 2006). Such perceptions can also be found
among the general public. Travellers in the study were aware of these connotations,
but often downplayed questions about travel and status during the interviews. For
frequent business travellers, they argued, travelling was much more about hard
work and lacking time for family life than about glamour. Yet there were individual
interviewees who clearly enjoyed their travelling because they felt it reinforced their
professional status. As one interviewee put it, you feel a bit more important [...]
when you have a job that involves travel.
Travel managers in the study also had many stories to tell about travellers for
whom business-class travel, large hotel rooms and prestigious bonus cards were
important, and who therefore at times transgressed the organizations travel policy.
Such travellers might be top-level managers who felt they deserved more upscale
travel and accommodations than others, as well as rank-and-le employees who did
not want to y in economy class, use low-cost airlines or make business trips by
train. Such attitudes, which travel managers sometimes described as the emotional
side of travel (cf. Holma 2009, 104), obviously involved employees professional
identity and perceived status as business travellers.
For several interviewees, business travel was also associated with a more general
identity as a mobile person. This was reected in accounts about travel competence, as discussed above, but also in a certain restlessness and in accounts about
the stimulation that came from seeing new places, meeting new people and having
new experiences. Travel might be stressful, but for several interviewees staying at
the ofce was not really an option:
Travel is a positive part of my life. I mean, Ive never had a job where I
havent been travelling, and I cant really imagine having that kind of job,
where I dont travel at all. If I did, I think my world would shrink dramatically, and I dont think Id be very happy about it.

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For those who often travel abroad, travel may be part of their identity as an international or cosmopolitan person (Lassen 2010). International travellers often described
how they enjoyed meeting and working with people from other countries, discovering cultural differences and getting rst-hand knowledge of other parts of the world.
Such knowledge, together with the ability to communicate and cooperate with colleagues or business partners across cultures, may promote travellers international
identity and, as discussed above, it represents an important form of mobility capital.
Yet the relationship between travel and international identication differed. For
some interviewees, travelling and working in an international environment was a
priority from the start. They had applied for their current jobs at least partly because
the positions involved international travel. Several of these respondents had previously studied foreign languages, studied abroad or worked abroad, and international
mobility often appeared as part of their career strategies. Some were also interested
in international politics, international relations and so forth, and many had friends
and acquaintances living abroad. In these cases, travel was a deliberate choice:
I like travelling. I like being international, I like meeting people from other
countries. I have a genuine interest in other countries, which I had even before
I started working with [the current employer]. And thats certainly the reason
why I was attracted by this position. [...] I wouldnt nd it very interesting to
work for, lets say, a Swedish company with no international contacts.
But for many travellers, travel was better characterized as an unintended side-effect
of their professional careers. With the internationalization of business activities and
politics, international travel today often comes with the job even for employees
who have not actively sought it. Travellers in this category, too, sometimes came to
appreciate the international contacts and experiences that they acquired through travel, and developed more or less international identities. Other travellers took little
or no interest in the international context of their work and felt they were simply
doing their job, regardless of its geographical location. For these travellers, travel
was just transport.
The Normalization of Travel
Reading the previous sections may give the impression that business travel has profound consequences for the professional and personal lives of frequent travellers
and to a certain extent this is true. However, the nal comment above, about travel
being just a matter of transport, echoes another recurrent theme in the interviews.
This theme implies that travel is increasingly regarded as a normal, commonplace
activity and that this may potentially make travel both less stimulating and less
stressful. Following Kesselring and Vogl (2010), this tendency can be conceptualized as a normalization of travel. The interviews suggest that normalization can be
analytically observed on three levels.
First, normalization occurs on a societal level. In an increasingly mobile society,
where leisure travel even to distant, exotic places is becoming more and more
common, travel at work may appear less exciting and less attractive. As one travel
manager put it:

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77

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Previously [...] that part of the job, travelling, was much more exciting. I think
that was because people didnt travel as much for leisure as they do now. Leisure travel has increased a lot since travel became so cheap. Almost everybody here travels abroad on holiday, takes a week off in the spring or
autumn, goes away skiing or playing golf, goes to Thailand or whatever,
because its so cheap. They didnt do that ve or ten years ago. In those days,
it was because of your work that you got the opportunity to travel...
As discussed in the introduction, travel in working life has been increasing too, due
to economic and political internationalization as well as organizational trends and
developments (Aguilra 2008). Many employees today travel as part of their job,
and this reinforces the normalization of travel on the societal level.
Second, normalization occurs on an organizational level. Travel becomes a more
normal activity in organizations where a large proportion of employees travel than
it does in other organizations. Such variation may also appear between units or
departments within the same organization. The interviews indicate that differences
in travel activity within and between organizations affect collective attitudes and
practices in relation to travel, both among managers and colleagues and among the
travellers themselves.
Third, normalization occurs on an individual level. Travel is more normal for
some individuals than for others, depending on their experience of travel. Individual
attitudes towards travel may therefore also change over time. Several interviewees
described how they gradually had come to view their travelling as an everyday
routine:
The time has passed when I thought business travel was fun. In the beginning
I really enjoyed it, but nowadays its just part of the job, so I dont think very
much about it really. [...] Of course, if theres something special at home for
example, and I need to travel, I may feel really bad about it, but otherwise...
no, it becomes something natural.
Naturally, normalization on the level of individual experiences is nothing new. Individuals have long been travelling extensively and developed practices and attitudes
accordingly (Leed 1991). But the normalization of travel on the organizational
level, and even more so on the societal level, emerges as a novel phenomenon,
reecting the overall increase in business travel, leisure travel and other forms of
mobility over the past few decades (Urry 2007; Faulconbridge et al. 2009).
The normalization of travel has multiple, and seemingly paradoxical, consequences. For one thing, travel may become less stressful as travellers gain experience and learn how to manage travel-related practicalities. The accounts about
travel competence are a good example. However, as indicated by the quotations
above, travel may also become less stimulating and employees less willing to
travel as the attraction and excitement of travel fade away.
Yet another possible consequence of normalization is that frequent business
travellers are met with more understanding and sympathy (or at least not with envy)
in their organizations. The interviews indicate that this was particularly the case in
organizations or departments where large proportions of employees were required to
travel. Such organization-level normalization of travel may even enable travellers to
demand better working conditions in relation to their journeys. One interviewee,

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P. Gustafson

who often returned home very tired after long-distance ights, felt that conditions
had improved:

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Previously, travel was a privilege. It was regarded as a privilege, and therefore

you could not claim any rights. Now, my feeling is that most... that we travel
much more, in general, within the organization, and therefore I think [...] these
things are changing to some extent. I can make demands, like if my plane
arrives at 11 am., I wont go to work, but Ill stay home that day. Previously,
I didnt do that. I went straight to work.
At the same time, the conception of travel as an everyday, normal activity may also
make employers less willing to accept what they regard as ashy and unnecessarily
expensive travel habits. One expression of this is the development of corporate travel management, especially in large organizations with extensive business travel.
Travel management typically implies a standardization of business travel to control
and reduce travel costs. This is achieved through common administrative routines,
travel policies with detailed travel standards (use of economy vs. business class,
hotel standards, etc.), centralized booking procedures, and controls to ensure policy
adherence (Gustafson 2012a). One travel manager quite explicitly made the
connection between normalization and travel standards:
Personally, I feel that travel nowadays, travel within Europe, thats just like
taking the commuter train, really. So Id say, remove all those extra services. I
dont get food served on the commuter train, do I?
One response to the normalization of travel, found among a few travellers in the
study, was to distinguish between normal travel and fun travel. Fun travel was
mainly associated with distant and unusual destinations and to some extent with
pleasurable travel conditions (business class and good hotels) and exciting meetings
or events at the destination, whereas normal travel was above all characterized by
routine and repetition. If possible, these interviewees attempted to minimize normal
travel but maintain fun travel.
However, a far more common pattern in the interviews was that travellers as well
as travel managers talked about travel in terms of rationality and efciency (cf.
Kesselring and Vogl 2010). In these accounts, employees travel as a matter of
course when that is the most efcient way to perform their work tasks. They avoid
unnecessary travel and excessive travel costs. When planning their travel, they
usually attempt to spend as few nights as possible away from home and family, and
as little working time as possible away from their regular workplace. These
accounts about rationality and efciency were often, explicitly or implicitly, made
in opposition to an understanding of travel as something extraordinary or particularly attractive. They reinforced the conception of travel as just a matter of transport
and downplayed the stimulating and to some extent also the stressful aspects of
business travel.
Conclusion
This study has examined how frequent business travel is experienced by travellers
and what consequences travel has for their personal and professional lives. Early

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research in this area largely described business travel as a source of stress and strain
for travellers (Striker, Dimberg, and Liese 2000; Espino et al. 2002; Ivancevich,
Konopaske, and DeFrank 2003), whereas more recent studies, partly inspired by
mobility research, suggest that business travel may also have positive implications
(Welch and Worm 2006; Bergstrm 2010; Lassen 2010). This study adds to the
existing research on business travel and mobility in three important ways.
First, in-depth interviews with frequent travellers demonstrate that business travel
may have a wide range of meanings and implications for the travellers a multitude that earlier studies have rarely acknowledged or explored in full. In the analysis, travel emerged as a signicant practice in its own right, with potentially
important consequences for the travellers work and working conditions, family
relations and private life, professional development and perceived status and selfidentity. Consequences were positive as well as negative. Travel may be associated
with enriching experiences, career opportunities, enhanced social and professional
status and a cosmopolitan identity, but also with physical and mental strain,
increased workloads and difculties in balancing work and private life.
Several points from the present analysis are of interest in relation to previous
research. The most serious problems, especially for travellers with children, concerned the impact of travel on family life (cf. Espino et al. 2002; Black and Jamieson 2007). Interviewees developed a number of strategies, both at home and at
work, in order to reconcile frequent travel with family obligations. Their temporal
strategies could often be described as an intensication of time, as travellers tried
to minimize travel time, to work intensely and efciently during working time, and
to secure undisturbed quality time for family and friends. But the use and usefulness of travel time is a multi-faceted issue (Lyons and Urry 2005; Holley, Jain, and
Lyons 2008). Most interviewees spent at least some of their travel time working,
but none of them had any formal agreement with their employer about it, and neither travellers nor travel managers were interested in regulating use of travel time.
Also, while many travellers complained about poor working conditions on the road,
there were also mobile workers who managed to nd (or create) high-quality working time during their journeys. Moreover, international travel may be associated
with an identity as a mobile, cosmopolitan individual (Lassen 2010). An interesting
nding was that such identities were found to exist both among travellers who had
a strong international orientation from the start and among employees for whom
travel and international experience rather appeared as an unintended side-effect of
successful professional careers.
Overall, the individual experiences of, and attitudes towards, travel differed
considerably among the travellers, and the analysis revealed a range of factors
underlying this variation. A number of travel-related factors were of crucial importance travel schedules (frequency, distance and duration, in particular nights spent
away from home), destinations (domestic vs. international), travel comfort and
working conditions on the road, travel planning (long-term planning vs. ad hoc
journeys) and the motives for travelling (e.g. routine meetings vs. meetings and
events that provided variation and stimulation). The analysis also highlighted
the role of work-related factors (the travellers professional role and position, overall
workload, whether or not work tasks could be performed on the road), organizational factors (policy regulation and organization of travel, attitudes towards
travel among managers and colleagues), social factors (work-life issues, family
obligations, support from ones spouse or other relatives) and personal factors

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P. Gustafson

(travel competence and experience, international vs. more local orientations).

These different factors may affect the extent to which travel is perceived as stimulating and/or stressful by individual travellers. Future research may use the present
ndings for investigating more systematically how and why different types or
categories of business travellers differ in their attitudes towards travel.
A second contribution of the paper concerns the different forms of mobility capital involved in business travel, particularly how travel may be benecial to travellers professional careers. The concept of mobility capital has two sides,
representing both resources and abilities that enable or facilitate mobility (Larsen,
Urry, and Axhausen 2006; Faulconbridge et al. 2009) and resources and abilities
acquired by travellers through their mobility (Scott 2006; Brooks and Waters 2010).
On the one hand, then, frequent travellers need travel competence to manage
the practicalities involved in travelling, they need to be able to organize their own
work in time and space, and they need planning and negotiation skills in order to
combine travel with family obligations and private life. A certain amount of social
support at home and organizational support at work is also useful. On the other
hand, travel helps travellers develop abilities and gain access to resources. The relationship between travel and careers is of particular interest in this respect. It is well
known that high-level managers and professionals are strongly over-represented
among frequent business travellers (e.g. Doyle and Nathan 2001), but previous
research has not examined this relationship in detail.
The present study identied a number of mechanisms through which business
travel may promote the travellers professional career: (1) employers may perceive
willingness to travel as evidence of work commitment and a high degree of
availability for work; (2) travellers become more visible both within and outside
their own organizations; (3) travel may be used for developing and maintaining professional networks; (4) travel gives opportunities to acquire valuable professional
knowledge; (5) international mobility helps to develop cross-cultural skills; (6)
workers who are able and willing to travel have access to a wider range of job
opportunities; and (7) more generally, travel may help travellers do a good job,
which in turn promotes their careers. These mechanisms demonstrate how different
kinds of mobility capital, possessed and developed by frequent business travellers,
may serve as causal links between spatial and social mobility (cf. Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004; Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006). The different mechanisms,
and their combined effects on career opportunities and professional careers, merit
further study.
One reason for investigating such effects is the gender dimension of business travel.
In this study, frequent male and female travellers had largely similar attitudes towards
their business travel, although some of the interviews indicated that travel may be
more stressful for women than for men (see also Bergstrm Casinowsky 2013). However, travel statistics show that far more men than women travel at work and that
women to a greater extent than men reduce their travel activity when they have young
children. These statistical patterns suggest that women are, on the whole, less able and
willing to take on jobs that require travel, and/or that employers due to gender
stereotyping consider them to be less suitable for such jobs (Gustafson 2006). This
suggests, in turn, that women miss out on important career opportunities.
A nal contribution of the study concerns the normalization of travel. As more
and more people travel, for business as well as leisure, this also affects common
understandings, attitudes and practices in relation to travel. Kesselring and Vogl

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81

(2010) have previously argued that normalization is eliminating many of the material and symbolic benets traditionally associated with business travel. This study
broadens the perspective on normalization in two important ways.
First, it suggests that normalization involves processes on the societal level, on
the organizational level and on the individual level. Although globalization and
low-cost travel have produced a general, societal-level, normalization of travel, the
degree to which travel is regarded, experienced and managed as a normal activity
still differs across organizations as well as individuals. A full understanding of the
normalization of travel and its implications therefore requires that all three levels be
taken into consideration.
Second, the normalization of travel may have both positive and negative implications for business travellers. As Kesselring and Vogl (2010) suggest, processes of
normalization and rationalization clearly have the potential to make travel less
attractive. When long-distance travel becomes more common, the symbolic value of
such travel is likely to be deated and the contribution of extensive business travel
to valued social identities and lifestyles less important. Moreover, corporate travel
management with a focus on standardization, regulation and cost control does not
only contribute to this symbolic deation, but may also result in lower levels of
material comfort for business travellers.
However, normalization may also have benecial consequences. On the individual level, experienced business travellers gradually acquire travel competence and
develop strategies that reduce travel-related stress. On the organizational level, high
travel activity may cause managers and colleagues to be more supportive of frequent travellers as they better understand the strain associated with intense travel.
Such insights may also inuence travel management practices (Gustafson 2012b).
More generally, if travel is no longer regarded as a privilege and associated with
glamour and prestige, there is little reason to expect additional sacrices from travellers in terms of workloads, working hours and poor work environment. In certain
cases at least, normalization may therefore lead to improved working conditions for
frequent business travellers.
An additional aspect to consider in relation to the normalization of travel is that
normalization and its consequences are likely to differ between social groups or categories. Familiar sociological categorizations such as gender, age and social class
merit further attention in this regard. Again, the gender dimension of business travel
is an interesting example. On the one hand, the male predominance in business travel probably reects social norms and practices that construct work-related travel as
a more normal activity for men than for women (Gustafson 2006). On the other
hand, one may speculate that a general societal-level normalization of travel may
gradually undermine gender stereotypes that depict women as less suitable for
mobile work.
The normalization of travel reects important developments of mobility in
society, in organizations, and among individuals (Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006;
Urry 2007; Faulconbridge et al. 2009). This study shows that processes of normalization have the potential to moderate and recongure the implications of travel in
multiple and sometimes paradoxical ways. What consequences this will have, for
business travel as well as other kinds of travel and mobility, is a highly relevant
question for future mobility research.

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P. Gustafson

Acknowledgements
The research was nanced by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social
Research (FAS dnr 2007-0205). The author is grateful to Ann Bergman, Gunilla
Bergstrm Casinowsky and Mats Franzn for very useful comments on earlier
drafts of the text and to the Swedish Business Travel Association for valuable help
with recruiting respondents for the study.

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