The cursor is blinking. It’s late, pushing 11 PM here in Abuja, and the only sounds are the hum of the air conditioner and the distant bark of a dog. My coffee went cold about an hour ago. It’s in these quiet, late-night moments on the road that you get to thinking about the ghosts of trips past. And tonight, I’m thinking about Dubai. Specifically, I'm thinking about the ghosts of every bad business trip itinerary I’ve ever created, and one spectacular failure in Dubai that stands as a monument to them all.
We all have that one trip, right? The one that almost broke us. For me, it was a high-stakes, three-day whirlwind in Dubai a few years ago. On paper, it was beautiful. A work of art, even. A sequence of meetings that flowed across the days with what I thought was military precision. In reality, it was a soul-crushing, humiliating disaster.
I remember standing on a pedestrian overpass somewhere on Sheikh Zayed Road, the late afternoon sun beating down, my suit sticking to my back. I was trying to get to a meeting in the DIFC, having just come from a facility tour way out in Jebel Ali. I was hopelessly, unforgivably late. Below me, twelve lanes of traffic were locked in a glittering, metallic standstill. All around me, the city's futuristic skyscrapers soared into the hazy sky, looking down with complete indifference. The problem wasn’t Dubai. The problem was my flawed, arrogant approach to building a business trip itinerary. I had treated the city like a checklist, not a living, breathing, traffic-choked organism.
That trip was a costly education. It led me, and our whole team at Cities Weekly, on a quest. We talked to people who really knew how to operate in these global hubs. The seasoned execs who seemed to float through DXB, the consultants who lived out of their TUMI bags, the local business leaders who understood the city's pulse. And what they taught us was a revelation. It was a method so simple, so full of common sense, that it felt like a secret hiding in plain sight. It’s a way to build a plan that doesn't just look good on paper, but actually works on the chaotic streets of a place like Dubai.
And the best part? You can lay the entire foundation in about thirty minutes.
The Big Secret: Anchor, Buffer, Flex
The secret to a successful business trip itinerary isn’t about cramming more in or controlling every second. It’s about letting go of that illusion of control. It’s about building a framework that is resilient, that can take a punch from reality—like a surprise traffic jam or a meeting that runs long—and not collapse. The system is built on three simple concepts: Anchors, Buffers, and Flex.
Step 1: Find and Plant Your Anchors
Before you do anything else, you have to identify your Anchors. These are the big, immovable pillars of your trip. They are the whole reason you’re there. Everything else is secondary. Your Anchors are your confirmed meetings, your keynote speech, that critical site visit, your flights, and your hotel. They are the skeleton of your entire business trip itinerary.
Now, here’s the part where my old self would have just listed them in a calendar. The new me, the me that survived the Sheikh Zayed Road meltdown, does something different. I open Google Maps. For the first 15 minutes of my planning, I am a geographer. I plug in the address of my hotel—say, the JW Marriott Marquis in Business Bay. Then I plug in the address of my 10 AM meeting in Dubai Media City. Then my 3 PM meeting in the DIFC.
I look at the map. I internalize the distance. I see that Media City and the Marina are neighbors, but the DIFC is a world away, a completely different cluster of activity. This visual understanding is everything. It’s the difference between success and failure. You start to see the city not as a list of names, but as a series of zones. This allows you to group your appointments logically. If you have two meetings in or around the same area, you stack them on the same day. You save the cross-town journey for a day when you only have one major Anchor to worry about. You start respecting the city's sheer scale, and in return, the city stops punishing you for your ignorance.
Step 2: Build Your Buffers (This Will Save Your Sanity)
A business trip itinerary without buffers is just a wish list waiting to be ruined. This is, without a doubt, the single biggest mistake most of us make. We look at Google Maps, see a 28-minute travel time, and block out exactly 30 minutes in our calendar. That is madness.
A buffer is breathing room. It’s a block of unscheduled time you intentionally place between your Anchors. It’s your defense against life. It’s for the taxi driver who doesn’t know the specific building you’re going to. It’s for the 15-minute security line in the lobby you didn’t know about. It’s for the meeting that runs 20 minutes over.
I’ll never forget trying to get to a lunch meeting at a restaurant in the Dubai Mall. I thought I was a genius, leaving a 15-minute buffer. It took me ten minutes just to walk from the taxi drop-off to the correct entrance, and another ten to navigate the ocean of people and find the actual restaurant. I arrived sweating, flustered, and late. My carefully planned "efficiency" had made me look like an amateur.
Now, my rule for Dubai is an almost comical 100% buffer for travel. If the app says 30 minutes, I block out an hour. An entire hour. It feels absurd when you’re scheduling it. It feels like a lifesaver when you’re on the ground. It means you arrive 25 minutes early, find a quiet corner in a café downstairs, sip an espresso, review your notes, and walk into your meeting calm, collected, and in complete control. That buffer is the best investment you will ever make in your professional reputation.
Step 3: Schedule Your Flex (Because You Are Not a Robot)
This is the final, and most human, piece of the puzzle. Flex time is the time you schedule for yourself. It’s a deliberate act of rebellion against the corporate hustle culture that tells us we should be working every waking minute on the road. That is a lie. A tired, burnt-out mind doesn't close deals. It makes mistakes.
Flex time is your strategic opportunity to recharge and, just as importantly, to actually connect with the place you’re in. The goal is to add moments of humanity back into what can be a sterile business trip itinerary. It doesn’t have to be a major excursion. It can be waking up an hour early to go for a run on the beach at JBR. It can be leaving the office at 6 PM to actually have a civilized dinner instead of just ordering room service.
The most powerful example of this I’ve ever seen came from an analyst on our team. On her third day in Dubai, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the manicured perfection of it all, she took two hours of Flex time in the afternoon. She took a taxi to Old Dubai, to the Al Fahidi district. She wandered the old, narrow streets, took a one-dirham abra boat across the creek, and lost herself for an hour in the noise and heady aromas of the Spice Souk.
The next day, she was in a meeting with a very important, very senior Emirati client. During the initial small talk, he asked her the standard question: “So, what do you think of my city?” Instead of the standard answer—“The buildings are so tall!”—she said, “I spent an hour at the Spice Souk yesterday. The scent of saffron and dried lemons is something I will never forget.”
The man’s entire demeanor changed. He leaned forward and broke into a huge, genuine smile. They spent the next ten minutes talking about the history of the creek and the dhow trade. She had shown, in one small, authentic gesture, that she was interested in his whole city, not just the glass towers. She built a bridge of rapport that was more valuable than any slide deck.
That is the power of Flex time.
Ultimately, a great business trip itinerary does more than just get you to your meetings on time. It creates the space for you to be your best self: prepared, calm, and genuinely engaged with your surroundings. It transforms a trip from a series of stressful obligations into a string of productive opportunities. It’s a change in mindset from “How much can I cram in?” to “How can I be most effective?” And that, as the quiet of this Abuja night reminds me, makes all the difference in the world.
Read Next:
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- Is Dubai Same as UAE?
- How to Start a Business in the UAE
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