TRAVEL INSIDER : When Business Travelers Can’t Leave Kids Home : Services: Hotel chains and convention organizers are moving to assist parents with day-care and nannies.

Jill Cornish is a Washington, D.C.-area executive with a 10-month-old son she is still nursing. In August, an important meeting was scheduled in Atlanta that she felt she could not miss. What should she do? “It was either take the baby,” she says, “or don’t go.” So she packed a backpack and a stroller, “and I carried him around with me for three whole days.”

Some of her colleagues looked at her “as if I was crazy,” but a number of women away from home as she was for several days told her, “I wish I had my kids with me.” As more and more mothers are dispatched on travel assignments, she says, “I think that this is something the corporate world is going to have to get used to. Our families shouldn’t take a back seat to our businesses.”

Increasingly, business travelers--mothers and fathers alike--are taking the kids with them on out-of-town trips, either because they want them along or because they have no other option. And at least some hotels and meeting organizers are scrambling to accommodate them in a variety of ways.

In 1991, about 9% of the business trips taken in the United States included children, according to surveys compiled by the U.S. Travel Data Center, up from 5% just two years earlier. Often both parents are accompanied by the youngsters, but sometimes a lone parent, like Cornish, will bring along his or her children.

“Certainly we do experience it,” says Bill Minnock, resident manager of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington, “although it’s not a phenomenon I’m aware of every day.” To meet the special needs of these family guests, the hotel can arrange for in-room baby-sitting, and it provides a small fleet of strollers at no extra cost.

Across the country, other organizations are taking even more innovative steps to assist business travelers with children:

* Childproof rooms. To make travel safer for young guests, the Embassy Suites chain of hotels now offers families at least one floor of childproof rooms in each of its 103 properties in the United States and Canada. Sharp corners are covered, electrical outlets are secured and glass objects have been removed. At many properties, guests can get emergency diaper delivery, request free playpens and order child-friendly foods such as peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and apple juice.

* Convention day care. At its big convention in San Francisco last summer, the Washington-based National Medical Assn., an organization of physicians, hired a child day-care firm called NannyCare USA to provide supervision and activities for 500 youngsters ages 3-17. Parents attending the convention’s business and social functions could make use of the in-hotel facility from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. for a five-day fee of $360, including appropriate meals, according to meeting planner Denise Brooking. The older children were escorted on sightseeing and sports excursions throughout the city.

* Convenient rooms for nursing mothers. The American Society of Assn. Executives, also headquartered in Washington, similarly provided day-care programs at its recent convention in Atlanta for four days for $195. Although this year’s activities were limited to children ages 6-17, the organization hopes to open them up in the future to toddlers, says convention planner Susan Sarfati. Currently, the group accommodates nursing mothers attending its conventions by providing them private rooms where the business functions are being held so they don’t have to return to their hotel rooms, which may be blocks away.

* Aid in finding day care. Stride Rite, a children’s shoe manufacturer in Cambridge, Mass., provides its employees with a free referral service for nannies or day care, says spokesman Dave Furhman. If an employee faces an out-of-town assignment and requires an in-house baby sitter for the duration, the company’s referral service will make the search for an acceptable nanny and make all the reference checks at no cost to the employee. The employee pays for the cost of the nanny or day care program.

* More nannies. NannyCare USA of Oakland, which handled the children’s programs at the National Medical Association convention in San Francisco, can arrange for private nannies in many of the nation’s major convention cities. The rate is about $ 8.75 per hour for the first child and 50 cents an hour for each additional child. At present, the firm arranges day care for conventions on the West Coast, but Cynthia Kelly, the chief executive officer, says it plans to expand nationwide in 1993. (For information: 800-448-2915.)

Parents are taking their children on business trips for a variety of reasons.

Cornish, who is publisher of Association Trends magazine, felt she had no other option. She did leave her 5-year-old child at home with her husband, but she could not be separated from her 9-month-old nursing son. In Atlanta she chose not to hire a hotel baby sitter--”I don’t leave my children with someone I don’t know”--and toted the youngster with her to every event she needed to attend.

“He wasn’t as good as I’d hoped,” she says, “but he was better than I expected.” To her relief, no one complained or seemed put out by the child’s presence in business sessions. Instead, he was “a magnet” to a lot of people, drawing fond attention from them. “Isn’t this terrific,” she was told several times, and she thinks she may have set an example other women will follow in the future. “There are more and more women involved in association work who are dealing with this dilemma.”

Cornish suggests a parent on a business trip ask an adult friend with whom the child is familiar or one of the child’s grandparents to come along on the trip as an occasional baby sitter. Two adults and a child usually can stay in a hotel room for the same rate as a single traveler.

Cynthia Kelly of NannyCare says parents who use her service tell her they like to include children in their business trips because it’s one way to see more of them. Often a traveling parent will schedule a weekend vacation for spouse and youngsters at the business destination as a way of incorporating the family in a hectic work schedule.

Gordon Lambourne, a publicist for Marriott hotels in Bethesda, Md., took his 6-year-old son, Doug, on a recent business trip to California, staying for the weekend so Doug could visit Disneyland. This winter, Lambourne thinks maybe he will arrange for Doug to fly out and join him in Utah at the end of the business week so the two can go skiing.

Embassy Suites has invested heavily in childproofing some rooms in every hotel, a program it calls “FamilyFriendly,” because it has seen a surge in family travel, both on business and for pleasure. “Because of the pressure on dual-career couples, many executives choose--or are forced--to take their children with them while traveling for business,” says Clyde E. Culp, president of the firm’s hotel division.

Convinced this is a trend for the future, Culp says his goal is to reorient traditional industry practice and treat children as “true hotel guests in their own right” and not simply as “tag-alongs.”

Day-care providers and other advisers say that traveling parents, faced with the recurring problem of what to do with the children while they are away, should consider these actions:

* If you are an association member who must attend conventions for professional reasons, talk to the convention planning staff about offering day-care programs.

* Ask your employer for assistance, even if that means initiating action on a new company policy. Roberta Bergman of Child Care Co., a Dallas firm that serves as a child-care consultant to 168 local employers, says some companies pay for overnight nanny care when a parent must travel out of town on business and no willing grandparent or other relative is available.

* If you take a child with you and you need a baby sitter, try to arrange for one in advance. You should have more choices, and you will have time to check references. Most better hotels maintain a list of baby sitters who have provided satisfactory service. But, says Bergman, “a parent is well advised to identify and talk to them ahead of time.”

* Look for hotels that make a point of welcoming children. Does the dining room have a children’s menu? Is there a swimming pool to keep them occupied, with proper supervision?

* Make sure you are aware of the procedures at your child’s school for making up missed days.

* If you don’t want to be separated from your child, bring along a baby sitter if you can afford it. If you can’t, you may have to do as Jill Cornish did and take your child to your appointments. It’s not an ideal solution, but convention planners say they are seeing more and more youngsters at their meetings.