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If you have a loved one who is a regular business traveller, head of kulula work Dawn Weir has some ideas for clever gifts.
And if you’re a business traveller yourself, why not treat yourself to something that will make life on the road easier in 2019 and beyond?
Rather than stuffing your laptop’s power-cables, chargers for your devices, and headphones, you can arrange them in neat, protective bags available in a range of sizes and designs. The more compact ones will hold your tablet or smartphone too.
Share presentations without having to carry heavier devices or worse, hoping that the one at the presentation venue works. Many have built-in speakers and several hours of battery life.
The RIF6 Cube is five square centimetres and weighs just grammes, slipping neatly into even modest laptop bags. Slightly bigger is the Optoma 750ST, which projects a 127-cm image from just 91 cm away. Its LED light source means no bulbs blowing at crucial moments.
While laptops are lighter and slimmer than ever, some business travellers opt to downsize even further, carrying a tablet that’s not much bigger than a smartphone. This can be paired by Bluetooth with a detachable keyboard and mouse, giving you full functionality.
Smaller keyboards, made of silicone, can be rolled up and packed away, and enable typing on your smartphone.
Indispensable for workers or students with talkative peers, or just lovers of music, movies and audiobooks, headphones are also a way to focus the mind.
You might choose to work while listening to a noise generator that plays ocean waves, coffee-shop ambience or rain on a tent, or to binaural beats that enable creativity and focus. Noise generators and binaural beats can also aid sleep, which can be especially useful in hotel rooms with noisy traffic, air-conditioning or guests.
These provide backup for electronic devices, especially those with bigger screens that gobble up battery-life. Shop around though, as some of the smaller ones simply aren’t worth the money.
Products offering a combination of battery pack, surge protector and charger are a good investment, and models like the Tripp Lite Traveler3 USB and the Belkin Travel Rockstar have proved popular with business travellers.
The Pluggage range of smart suitcases by Delsey has fingerprint ID to lock and unlock, interior lighting and speakers, and USB chargers for your devices. It weighs itself and its GPS tracking tells you exactly where it is in the airport or aboard your flight.
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