Bleisure—business and leisure—might be the buzzword of the moment, but travelling for work isn’t always easy.
From getting to the airport to gearing up for meetings to staying in touch with the office, the hassle often outweighs the reward. In fact, a 2016 Booking.com study found that business travelers experience travel stress due to a plethora of anxiety-inducing scenarios that leave them worried and anxious.
Recognizing the wear and tear of work travel, several startups are tackling the problem head-on with high-tech solutions to soothe worn out road warriors.
Tune out the noise without tuning out
Noise-cancelling headphones are all well and good, but missing an important phone call or gate change announcement is the last thing your stress levels need when you’re travelling for work. Enter Here One, a wireless listening system from Doppler Labs that’s designed to drown out the hubbub of busy public spaces so you can get down to business.
Comprising two wireless smart buds and a connected smartphone app that acts as a remote control for the buds, Here One combines the functionality of conventional headphones with smart listening and noise filtering technologies, so you can reduce background noise, amplify speech, take phone calls or layer digital audio over real-world sound.
An accessory that alters your mood
Stress can silently creep up when travelling solo, sending every ounce of productivity out the window. Luckily, help is at hand—literally. Sentio Solutions offers a mood-sensing wristband called Feel, which picks up on your emotional well-being and provides tips to put you at ease.
Four integrated sensors on the wristband measure myriad bio-signals, including blood volume pulse and skin temperature, and translate them into emotions that sync with a mobile app so you can recognise your triggers. The wristband also vibrates to let you know you’re in a particularly stressful situation, while the app offers helpful stress relieving suggestions such as meditation and breathing exercises.
Sleep for success
Can’t sleep in hotels? Travel-induced insomnia is something that befalls most business travellers at some stage, whether it’s the dread of an upcoming meeting or a particularly punishing pillow. Instead of reaching for a sleeping pill, try Thync Relax Pro, a high-tech solution based on an age-old practice that aims to reduce stress and encourage relaxation.
The idea is simple: a padded pod placed on the back of the neck gently stimulates your nerves to deliver stress relief, while an accompanying app includes two neurostimulation programs. When used together, the app and pod tap into the brain to conquer stress, nervousness and sleep problems, without resorting to chemicals.
Get smart
If you’re in the market for new luggage, consider one that will make life on the road a lot easier. Bluesmart’s latest series of smart suitcases offers a laundry list of functions designed to make your travel experience as seamless as possible.
The collection includes a carry-on bag and a larger check-in suitcase. They not only come embedded with 3G and GPS technology (so you can track their location anywhere in the world), but which also feature a remote digital lock system controlled from your phone, built-in weight sensors that sync with your airline and device-charging capabilities.
There’s also a laptop bag with a built-in Bluetooth tracker and two USB ports so you can charge two devices simultaneously. And because it opens 180 degrees flat, you don’t need to remove your laptop at TSA checkpoints.
This bot means business
We’ve all been there: a last-minute business trip pops up and you go over budget by booking the first flight and hotel you see because you’re too busy to shop around for a better deal. Time-crunched business travellers can now enlist Claire, an artificially intelligent assistant, to take care of everything virtually.
Claire communicates via text, Slack, Facebook or Skype to book policy-compliant trips in minutes. That’s not all: she proactively solves any issues that arise during the journey and feeds travel expenses directly into an existing expense management system, so you can spend more time preparing for your meetings and less time sweating the small stuff.
Of course, if Claire is too pricy for you, look no further than Roomex for all your corporate hotel booking needs. You can plug in your travel policy ensuring nobody books above their pay grade, and the booking engine saves you over 21% on average on over 550,000 hotels worldwide.
Best of all, there are no costs, no commitments and no contracts.
