GUEST BLOG: Who are your business travel villains?

Without a doubt our award for Business Travel Villain goes to roaming charges! No one likes them and yet we all get them when travelling abroad and there is very little we can do about it – or is there? Here at RoamingExpert.com we have put together a guide with some handy hints and tips on how to banish that villain or at least reduce its impact on your budget.

Look at where you roam to
Where is it that you travel to mainly? Is it outside of Europe, within Europe or all a combination of both? Each network has slightly different rates depending on where you go.

Do you use voice, data or both?
What is your main concern when roaming? is it your voice calls, data usage or both? Again, different networks have different charges for voice and data and some are more competitive than others so it is important to know how you need to use your mobile when you are roaming.

What handset do you use?
We would always recommend using a Blackberry as they compress data more efficiently than other handsets and so data charges will always be less.

What are your roaming rates like?
Are your current roaming rates competitive? Or are they actually over inflated? What are you being charged to visit the countries you do? Roaming rates from provider to provider vary greatly some are vastly overinflated.

Do you know how your network bills?
The networks bill completely differently, some calls may be included in inclusive minutes and some may not.  Also some networks charge per minute and some per second, this can make a big difference to your final bill.

Renewing your mobile contract may not be the top of your list of priorities but if you want to avoid a major travel villain in today’s new, global and technologically focused world it could well pay to re assess your contract. Finding out a little more about it and taking some top tips on how to best deal with the situation could well pay off and we are here to help too of course!  

This blog was written by Kate Staley, marketing manager with  Roaming Expert. You can contact her at kate.staley@roamingexpert.com and find out more about the company at www.roamingexpert.com