Increasingly, Business Travelers Pack Baby as Well as Briefcase

When Elliot Beddor is in New York on business, he stays at a small hotel where the staff knows him. There and in other cities, he takes in the sights when his schedule permits. His nap schedule, that is.

Elliot, the 15-month-old son of a Minneapolis retailing executive, is one of a growing legion of pint-size travelers who tag along when Mom or Dad takes a business trip.

About 15% of the 275 million business trips taken in 1995 included children, up from 12% of 222 million trips in 1990, according to the Travel Industry Assn. of America.

As in olden days, many trips involve a working dad, a stay-at-home mom and kids. But increasingly, working parents are going on the road with one or two children, and perhaps a nanny. Call it adventure travel-cum-briefcase.

With teddy bear in tow, the youngest travelers sightsee or swim in the hotel pool while their parents work. Older children go to kids’ camps proliferating at hotels that are eager for such business. In-between or after work, the family fun begins.

“I get to see more of Elliot when I travel than when I’m home,” says his mom, Gail Dorn, vice president of communications and community relations for Dayton Hudson Corp. “In-between meetings, he’s right there.”

On a recent trip to New York, Dorn finished morning meetings in time to meet Elliot at a restaurant for lunch. As he chomped on peas and tortellini, guzzled orange juice and gurgled at waiters, Dorn pondered with his nanny, Cheryl Anderson, which museum Elliot would take in that afternoon.

Of course, taking baby along is often tricky. Changing a diaper in a closet-sized airplane bathroom is a challenge. An earache on the road is doubly painful for all. And novel foods don’t always sit well.

Once Elliot accompanied Dorn to a business dinner at a New York restaurant and happily sampled mango sorbet and other tidbits. But back in the hotel elevator, up came Elliot’s dinner--all over a group of businessmen sharing the ride.

“To this day, the hotel staff teases me and Elliot about that night,” laughs Dorn, who also travels with her stepchildren Paige, 12, and Paris, 10.

Yet parents say the effort is worth it, providing not only extra time with their children but also opportunities for children to see the working world and the wide world.

T.J. Cline, a 2 1/2-year-old who has flown more than 100 times, is “friendly because he’s used to being around so many different people,” says his mother, Nancy Lieberman-Cline, a professional basketball player. “To me, there’s only been an upside to taking him with me.”

Boston consultant Khouri Jamison-Carlen also finds that she’s more effective in her work when her 14-month-old is near. “I’m not worrying, wondering, missing her. She’s there. I’m able to focus better,” she says.

A child might say the same. “Sometimes I miss my mom. I’d rather be on a trip with her,” says Elayna Schranz, the 6-year-old daughter of Hilton Hotels executive Joanie Flynn. Elayna names new foods, hotel pools and airplane rides as her favorite parts of such trips.

For many parents, business trips are a staple of work life. Yet they’re also growing shorter (3.1 nights on average) and more frequent (5.73 trips a year)--a trend conducive to taking a child along.

At the same time, in an era of dual-career couples, single parents and far-off grandparents, it’s often easier to bring a child on a trip than to arrange extra child care.

“The option of Mom staying home and taking care of the kids, as in the Ozzie and Harriet era, is often no longer there,” says Nancy Dunnan, an associate editor at the Travel Smart newsletter.

Older working parents also have the means and desire to bring kids along on business trips, notes Christine Tempesta, president of KiddieCorp, which cares for children during conventions and other business meetings.

Tempesta’s 11-year-old business has grown as much as 20% a year as both hotels and companies wake up to this trend.

If a hotel or convention center can’t baby-sit the children accompanying a meeting, Tempesta steps in. She can create a day-care center or preschool at almost any site in 26 cities, using managers and toys dispatched from her San Diego headquarters and local helpers.

Caring for children of the business traveler has become a point of competition for hotels, says Jim Austin, spokesman for the Point Hilton at Squaw Peak resort in Phoenix, where roughly 30% of visiting children are with parents on business, up from 23% in 1994.

To entertain them, Squaw Peak provides Coyote Camp, where children between the ages of 3 and 12 learn about Native American culture or Arizona’s history for $45 a day.

Other Hilton hotels extend camp into the evening or add special activities for children visiting on business, says Elayna’s mother, Joanie Flynn, director of leisure and resort marketing for Hilton. Other chains are making similar efforts.

In an age of burgeoning work-family benefits, companies are extending a helping hand. The costs of bringing a child on a business trip are almost always borne by employees, but companies are trying to help in other ways.

Eli Lilly & Co., Deloitte & Touche and others open either company day-care centers or back-up child-care programs for employees’ visiting children. A Chicago manager traveling to Los Angeles on business could, for example, put his child in a Los Angeles center during a business trip.

Xerox Corp. is currently writing a booklet for employees on business travel with children, partly as a result of employee interest in bringing children to the company’s main training center in Virginia.

Dayton Hudson allows Dorn to keep half her travel savings if she stays over a Saturday night--a boon for her travel costs.

But perhaps more importantly, the company supports her desire to bring Elliot.

“I don’t believe it creates any distractions at all,” says Larry Gilpin, executive vice president of human resources at Target Stores, a Dayton Hudson division. “I think it may even increase [Dorn’s] ability to focus and concentrate on the business she’s there for.”

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Why Take a Meeting if You Can Take a Nap? A day on the road with Elliot Beddor, the 15-month-old son of rexecutive Gail Dorn:

* 7:30 a.m.--Wakes up in hotel in New York City, the morning after flying in from Minneapolis. Bath.

* 8 a.m.--Breakfast at hotel with his mom and his nanny, Cheryl Anderson.

* 9 a.m.--Mom leaves to register for a retailing conference.

* 9:15 to 11:30 a.m.--Takes morning nap in hotel crib.

* Noon--Samples tortellini, peas, rolls and orange juice at a hotel restaurant with mom and nanny.

* 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.--Visits Children’s Museum of Manhattan with nanny.

* 3:30 p.m.--Snacks on Cheerios at a cafe, while nanny has cake.

* 4:30 to 5:45 p.m.--Nap.

* 4:45 p.m.--Mom returns.

* 5:45 p.m.--Mom leaves for business cocktail party.

* 6 p.m.--Supper of cheese, fruit, juice and deli meats in hotel room with nanny.

* 8 p.m.--Bed.