Door to door: why travel time decides productivity
Why door-to-door travel time, not flight time, decides productivity on business travel, and how to choose meeting locations that protect working hours.
By Convien teamPublished 5 min read
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Travel time decides productivity because every hour on the road is an hour not spent on the work the trip is for, and the hours that count are door to door, not the time in the air. A one-hour flight easily fills half a working day once you add the way to the airport, security, waiting and the way into town. For a meeting, the location sets those hours for every attendee at once, so choosing it on door-to-door travel time protects more working time than any travel policy rule.
Ticket prices get scrutinised line by line. The time attendees spend getting to a meeting rarely shows up anywhere, even though it can outweigh the fares. Here is how to make it visible and how to plan with it.
Flight time vs door-to-door travel time
Flight time is what booking screens show, so it is what people compare. But a flight is only the middle of a journey. Take an example trip:
45 minutes from the office to the airport
75 minutes before departure for security, the gate and boarding
60 minutes in the air
20 minutes to leave the aircraft and the airport
40 minutes into the city to the venue
That is four hours door to door for a one-hour flight, one way. The same trip by a direct train might be 15 minutes to the station, 10 minutes on the platform, three and a half hours on board and 15 minutes to the venue: slightly longer in total, with three and a half hours at a table.
The figures in this example are assumptions, and your routes will differ. The principle does not: only door to door can compare two journeys, or two meeting locations, fairly.
Usable time and lost time
Not every travel hour is equally lost.
Trains. With a seat and a table, long stretches can be used for focused work, reading or calls, depending on connectivity on the route.
Short-haul flights. Security, boarding, take-off and landing leave little usable time. The hours around the flight are fragmented.
Driving. The time behind the wheel is lost for work, and a long drive before a full-day meeting leaves people tired.
Changes and waiting. A connection with a two-hour wait adds hours that are hard to use well.
Time outside working hours has a cost too. The 5 a.m. start to catch the first flight, the evening away from home and the tired first morning all affect how much a person contributes to the meeting. Whether travel time counts as working time, and how it is compensated, depends on your employment contracts and local rules, so check with HR before you put a value on it.
Putting a number on the productivity loss
To make travel time comparable with cost, you need three things:
Hours door to door per attendee for each candidate location, ideally split into usable and lost time.
An internal hourly rate that HR or controlling agree on. It does not need to be precise to be useful, it needs to be consistent.
A separate line in the report. Working time not lost on the road is avoided cost, not a hard saving. Report it next to travel spend, not inside it.
A hypothetical example: 40 attendees, two candidate cities. In the first, each attendee needs six hours door to door for the return trip, 240 hours in total. In the second, four and a half hours each, 180 hours in total. The second city gives back 60 hours, the equivalent of seven and a half eight-hour working days, before a single ticket price is compared. How this sits next to fares and hotel nights is shown in our guide on how to calculate the true travel cost of a meeting.
Fair journeys: look at the longest trip
Totals hide people. A location can have a low total travel time and still mean a full day of travel for a regional team or colleagues from a smaller site. They arrive late, miss the evening programme or need an extra night, and over time they stop coming.
Fairness is worth looking at directly:
Who travels longest, and for how long?
Does anyone need to leave before dawn or get home after midnight?
Are the same people always the ones with the long journeys?
Some organisers set a simple rule, such as a maximum journey each way for anyone attending. Others accept a longer journey for a few if it saves a lot for many, as long as it is a conscious choice. We go deeper on this in fair travel time for meeting attendees.
Working hours and travel windows
Productive journeys also depend on when people travel. A meeting that starts at 9 a.m. pulls distant attendees in the evening before. A start at 11 a.m. may let the same people travel on the day, saving a hotel night and an evening away. The end time works the same way in reverse.
When you compare locations, set the travel window you are willing to accept: the earliest departure, the latest arrival, how many changes and how much waiting. These rules change which connections count, and with them which city comes out best.
The productivity view in the Meeting Place Finder
The Meeting Place Finder counts the whole trip for every attendee: time in transit, changes and waiting, and the way to the station or airport. You can set options for stops, fare types, waiting time and working hours, alongside your travel policy.
Three views rank the candidate cities: maximum productivity for the least time on the road, minimum CO2 for the lowest emissions, and lowest ticket cost for the lowest travel spend. All three rest on the same data. The travel details of each city show the trip from every origin, so fair journeys are part of the decision, not an afterthought.
Sometimes the most productive location and the lowest-CO2 location are the same, for example a city most attendees reach by fast direct trains. Sometimes they pull apart. Seeing all three views makes the trade-off explicit, and it is your decision to make. How we calculate explains the data behind every travel time.
FAQ
What does door-to-door travel time mean?
The full journey from where an attendee starts to the venue: the way to the station or airport, waiting, security, the trip itself, changes and the way to the venue.
Is flying always faster than the train?
Not door to door. On many short and medium distances, a direct train from city centre to city centre takes a similar time, and more of it can be used for work.
How do I put a value on travel time?
Agree an internal hourly rate with HR or controlling, multiply it by the hours on the road, and report the result as avoided cost, separately from travel spend.
Does travel time count as working time?
That depends on employment contracts and local rules. Check with HR before you include it in a calculation.
Can I plan a meeting for maximum productivity?
Yes. In the Meeting Place Finder, the maximum productivity view ranks candidate cities by the least time on the road for your attendees.
If you would like to see how many working hours the right location gives back, book a demo and we will look at one of your meetings together. Or request a free trial for one event with up to 10 attendees.
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