Living the Miles We Travel, with an E-concierge App?

By guest author Swarna Ellison of PlayyIt

When you first started traveling for work, do you remember how exciting the prospect of traveling to and exploring new places was?  It was a chance to explore these places, expand your horizons, and meet new people. But for most of us, work travel has become tedious. Planning for personal time while on business trips is difficult in part because of lack of time, but also because of business networking demands on our personal time.

Some women business travelers are excellent planners and carve out well-planned downtime to work travel. But how many of us non-planners have had a few hours to kill, or are unexpectedly required to stay over the weekend in our destination city and have found it too much of an effort to research things to do locally? Have we just become hard-working automatons? Or is there no single solution that helps plan our “time off” more creatively, without requiring too much effort?

Mobile apps such as FourSquare, Time Out, Google FieldTrip, and others offer geo-aware entertainment search features to help find local places of interest or dinner options nearby. These apps provide the convenience of finding the typical “things to do” nearby and vary in terms of the purchasing options and user experience. Some don’t offer any purchasing options, leaving a consumer to call, email, reserve, and purchase through separate channels, and others provide a drawn-out experience. None include custom options that can also enhance business networking.

I suspect that the modern woman business traveler who is discerning, mobile, and curious but who does not have a lot of time would want her personal downtime to be more easily fulfilling – like having your very own personal concierge at your beck and call.

PlayyIt aims to be that personal e-concierge for a professional woman traveler, empowering her to make the most of her precious reserve of personal time, whether this is “me time” or used for business networking, when she is away from family and friends for work travel.

The app learns your tastes and interests, applies them even on short notice to conduct extensive searches, and quickly helps you purchase only the relevant, customized options. Think new artist concerts, spas with certain services, Thai meal options, and so on. The app helps purchase an itinerary quickly and securely. If so desired, it also enables you to invite contacts, known or new from your pre-selected networks, to join and thus increase your networking opportunities.

As a business professional, how much is it worth it to you to make the most of your downtime, exploring the places you visit, enhancing your business networks, and improving networking skills through your travels?

With today’s frenetic pace of business travel, there is minimal time for personal enjoyment, while business networking is increasingly critical. PlayyIt, your personal e-concierge app, gives the means to combine both objectives, to make the very best of those opportunities that do come up and help us live up those miles we travel!

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Swarna Ellison is a seasoned business professional with 15+ years of consulting and corporate experiences in technology, consumer connections, cost management and business development. She has been a frequent traveler both for work and for pleasure. She and her team are developing a solution to enable easier, custom experiences during travel.

[A version of this post was first published on playyit.moonfruit.com.]