David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

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Postcards From The Conference Room – Is This Glamorous?- July 2025

My wife and I were out the other night having dinner with two other couples. Nice folks. Parents of friends of our kids. The kind of evening where you make polite small talk over shared appetizers and then slowly start peeling back the layers of each other’s lives.

Eventually, someone asked what I do for a living.

Now, I’ve never had a tidy answer to that. I usually rattle off the greatest hits: former broadcaster, former engineer, techie guy, consultant, current industry analyst. A few polite nods. Maybe a blink. Sometimes a “Huh.” Then, like clockwork, comes the line: “You’re so lucky to travel all over the place!”

Lucky?

I get that response a lot. Usually when I mention a client engagement in Paris or a conference in Barcelona. To people who don’t travel for work, it sounds like a dream – jetting off to some postcard-perfect city, probably sipping espresso at a sidewalk café between meetings or wandering cobblestone streets with gelato in hand.

But here’s the reality: until my fourth trip to Barcelona, I had never actually seen Barcelona.

Because when you travel for business, you’re not a tourist. You’re a briefcase with a boarding pass. My standard itinerary is something like this: Newark airport, inside of a plane, foreign airport’s endless line to reach passport control, taxi, hotel, conference room, back to hotel, back in a taxi, back to the airport. I’ve spent more time looking at border guards, beige carpet and badge scanners than I have at famous landmarks.

Honestly, you could swap the name of the city, and unless I caught a glimpse out the taxi window, I probably wouldn’t notice. If you told me I’d been unknowingly recruited into some old Mission: Impossible episode (the TV show from the 60s, not the movies that stopped Tom Cruise from aging) where they faked a location just to mess with me – I’d believe it.

It’s one of the reasons I almost always book Hampton Inns when I travel in the US. As a Hilton Diamond, I have my pick of properties, but the Hampton is like the McDonald’s of hotels: cheap, consistent, predictable, and with a corporate governance I can reach-out to if necessary. They all look the same – and when you’re never really leaving the hotel, there’s some strange comfort in that sameness. Plus, they have waffles. That helps. And, they don’t upcharge for things like internet, breakfast, gym, etc. That helps even more.

People sometimes ask why I don’t just tack on a day or two to the trip and actually see the place I’m in. And sometimes I do – if I can align the stars, my wife’s schedule, and our budget. But even when I can swing that, the truth is this: after five, ten, even fifteen days on the road, all I want to do is go home. I want to eat normal food. Sleep in my bed. Do laundry. Stop living out of a suitcase and wondering whether I packed enough underwear…or Tums.

So the next time someone tells me I’m “so lucky to travel everywhere,” I’ll smile and nod like I always do. But what I’m really thinking is this: glamorous isn’t strolling down Las Ramblas or the Champs-Élysées. Glamorous is not needing Sudafed on the plane so my ears don’t clog, not needing Imodium just to get through a day, not needing Tylenol PM to fall asleep – and not worrying if the flight home will be delayed or cancelled.

Because for those of us who travel for work, glamour is overrated. Sleep, routine, and a closet full of clean clothes – now that’s luxury.

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

Copyright 2025 David Danto

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