Glamorous in Greece? Business Trips Explained
To say that travel is always glamorous is a lie that travel magazines like to tell you. I prefer the phrase coined by the Washington Post’s Tom Theroux that “travel is only glamorous in retrospect.”
As I look back on the beautiful photos of sunset beaches, crashing waves, piles of mezze and 4 star resorts, I feel entranced by the beauty of Rhodes, Greece where I stayed for four long days of adventure on a work trip this week. However, then I remember that the sunset photo was captured because I begged my colleague to pull the car over so I could put my toes in the sand between meetings. The mezze was delicious; then I remember that we discussed workshop reporting for the first hour of dinner. The 4 star resorts were fabulous and the beds top notch; then I remember that I slept in them an average of six hours a night because I wanted to squeeze in a swim before getting to the workshop room before the staff arrived.
Being an expat, working in tourism management, wandering the world, and writing a travel blog are excellent aspects of my life that always look more glamorous than they are in the moment. Behind the scenes are hours of preparation and phone interviews spent collating the documents to even take to the workshop, not including the time spent compiling the data gathered at the workshop itself. Those four days in Greece may have been all-expenses paid, but I worked 50 hours that week and flew completely in my private time outside of that. There are photos of me cooking amazing meals from scratch with my German boyfriend in the west of Germany the weekend following; what you might not know is that I had to sacrifice sleep and sanity to squeeze in a day and a half just to see him since we live in two separate countries.
It’s a hard life. Sometimes a sleepless one. What I learn along the way, though, is absolutely priceless. During that process mapping workshop, we gathered feedback and engagement from the destination back office and service staff about the priorities and pain-points in their jobs. We confirmed exactly how things work in the destination in the next step to bring our thousands of employees and stakeholders around the world into alignment and efficiency. The staff came from all around Europe and had worked all around the world; their stories are inspiring, hilarious, painful, and hopeful. Just one peek into the lives of 21 staff members opened my eyes even more to the complexity and wonder that it is to work in tourism.
It’s not all glam, but we love it anyway.
“Just one peek into the lives of 21 staff members opened my eyes even more to the complexity and wonder that it is to work in tourism.”
