I traveled extensively and you can justify good business accommodation , both office and and sleeping ( sometimes it was offered or organised by companys I was working for) and with extra days before or after contract I saw many cities and regions all on company $ or at marginal cost to myself and family . Yeah you work your butt of but the rewards for the crappy plane flights etc is the extra days and seeing different places . I have often done first visits and meetings and then worked remotely from my own office using video links and only return irregularly to save on travel time, accommodation and clients are happy as they access to you in their time zone and don't have to provide office space etc. I just get allocated a PA and IT contact who arrange all internal access and all extra documents required for the projects and it can be far more efficient . I have even run teams remotely with morning meetings and technology makes it so much easier these days. So often meetings and being n site is a bloody waste of everyones time but it takes time and experience to show clients the value you add and for them to understand so you need to document your wok, process and ensure not being on site in not a hurdle to their internal work methods. Have to be ready to drop everything when things turn to crap and go hold hands with some clients and their staff or other contractors. Nothing worse than clients offices and shared bloody workspaces etc etc can be just so insecure and unproductive and have dealt with serviced office providers like servcorp that mean you have a base you can just walk into in every city and use boardrooms and get staff away from their distractions etc. Pay for what you use and small annual access fees etc or other arrangements
Just depends on your business type and clients as to what works. Took me years to show some clients the value of me not being in their office and billing them plane fares to goto eastern states and back etc yet others gave it a go and reaped benefits of access straight away
Work smart and get your employees and employers to do same
