While business travel is rarely fun, it can at least be made as relaxing as possible by adopting a few simple tips. This page summarises the main things I've found make a difference to how hassle-free a trip is ...

First and most important, travel light. There's nothing more unpleasant than lugging heavy bags around, and if you have to put luggage in the hold then you add delays at both ends of the journey - at check-in, you can't use the faster check-in options (see below), and on arrival you have to wait around for your luggage to appear.

The biggest favour you can do yourself is to carry only hand-baggage. And unless you like carrying heavy bags down miles of airport corridors, the best solution is a roller-bag. If you only travel a few times a year, you can get a cheap-and-cheerful one from about £30, but if you travel regularly then a high-quality bag will pay dividends. Things to look for are:

• Lots of compartments
• A padded/suspended laptop compartment accessible from outside the case
• All compartments lockable (for leaving in hotel luggage stores after check-out)
• Good-quality wheel units for effortless wheeling

To fit everything into a carry-on baggage, be ruthless when packing. Most people lug all sorts of things away with them that they never use, especially clothes. My particular tips would be:

• If you need a suit, wear it (but with a t-shirt instead of formal shirt for comfort)
• Forget an alarm-clock, use your phone or PDA
• Take ebooks instead of paper ones
• Take small toiletry items, not full-sized ones
• Use hotel laundry services to cut down on changes of clothes
• For multi-day trips, remember you can always buy more toiletries when there (and 4- and 5-star hotels will provide everything as standard or on request)

Note that on standard airlines, you can carry two items of handbaggage: a standard roller-bag plus a laptop or camera bag. There is no longer any weight limit on many airlines (BA, for example). However, no-frills airlines often restrict you to a single bag, and often with silly weight limits too.

Take advantage of faster check-in methods

Checking-in can be time-consuming and tedious, but with handbaggage only it can be a swifter and more civilised affair.

At the very least, many airlines have handbaggage-only check-in desks. These tend to have much shorter queues, and move faster as there's no hold luggage to check-in, and very few people using these desks are the type of people who can't find their ticket, have an expired passport and have turned up on the wrong day ...

Better still, a number of airlines have self-service check-in machines. Not only does this tend to be quicker, but I haven't yet met one that wanted to weight my hand-baggage.

Or most civilised of all, check-in online or by phone. You can often check-in 12, 18 or even 24 hours in advance, and most online check-in services allow you to print your own boarding pass. With this option, you don't even need to use a machine at the airport - just go straight through security.

It's worth joining the frequent-flyer programme for each airline you fly, even if you will never want to use the miles. The systems usually remember your seat preferences, and will often pre-assign your preferred seat at the time of booking. They often also allow you to do an earlier online check-in.

For day trips, it is usually possible to check-in for your return flight at the same time - airlines know that people flying out to a business meeting are not going to fail to show for the return flight.

Red-eye flights: just say 'maybe' ...

My advice on overnight flights used to be 'just say no'. Sleeping fitfully and uncomfortably, coupled to a significant time-zone change, is a recipe for leaving you zonked for the next 2-3 days.

However, if you are flying in business class and can fly with an airline that offers proper flat-bed seats, then this can actually be quite a sensible way to travel.

BA's Club World, for example, gives you a 6-foot long bed, and provided you get a window seat, you effectively have your own little 'cabin' when you fold the privacy screen down. It's surprising how effective this is in insulating you from the rest of the cabin and creating a relaxing environment in which to sleep.

Virgin's Upper Class goes one better and has reversible seats that flip over from a leather seat to a foam 'mattress' for the bed.

I also have a pair of pyjamas which I bought specifically for overnight flights. If there's one thing worse than sleeping in your clothes, it's waking up in them. So once the cabin lights are dimmed, I take that as my cue to nip to the loo to get changed and then sleep comfortably.

However, if the only option is an ordinary seat, my previous 'just say no' advice applies ...

Minimise the effects of jet-lag

Jet-lag can be greatly reduced by switching time-zones immediately you board the aircraft. If you adjust your watch straight away, you get used to the new time and it will feel much more natural than if you switch at the last minute on arrival.

On arrival, try to adjust immediately to the local time in terms of sleep. Try to avoid sleeping during the day. This isn't generally too difficult on something like London to NY: it's just staying up an extra few hours. But even on something like London to Singapore, when you are arriving the following morning, I try to stay awake through the day and only go to bed in the early evening. It makes for a very long and tiring day, but by the following morning you're fully-adjusted.

Incidentally, it is worth the effort of changing the time-zone on your laptop and pda as well, otherwise things can get very confusing - as a purely hypothetical example, you don't want your pda alarm-clock going off at UK time when you're in New York ...

Dealing with creased clothing

If you can get away with a silk shirt, these are ideal travel wear: they weigh nothing, take up virtually no space and - when rolled up rather than folded - barely crease.

You can buy clothes designed for travelling made from a material that doesn't crease. You can even get Italian suits made from this material, and mine is absolutely brilliant - I've crossed the Atlantic in it and arrived looking unrumpled (well, my suit did, anyway).

But if clothes do become creased, don't worry - creases can be effortlessly removed in about 20-30 minutes. Just put the clothes on hangers, hang them in the bathroom, put the shower on maximum heat and full power and close the door: the creases just drop out.

Don't live out of a suitcase

When you're doing four countries in five days, it can seem a bit pointless to unpack. The temptation is to simply rifle through your bag when you need something. After all, why unpack when you're going to have to repack early the next morning. This was my attitude for a long time.

But after a while I realised that I feel much more at home in a hotel room if I unpack everything I may need while I'm there, and have things set up pretty much as I do at home. It's surprising how much difference it makes.

Of course, this does introduce the risk of leaving something behind. I deal with this in two ways. First, everything I carry has a fixed place in my bag. I know where my iPod charger should be, for example, so if it's not there when I pack, I'll notice it. Second, I do a careful sweep of the room before I leave - something which is doubly necessary if you are as hopeless at mornings as I am, so I do it twice ...

Keeping in touch

Business travel can be a lonely experience, especially when you only stay a night or two in each country. Keeping in touch with your partner and/or friends can make a big difference.

For phone calls, mobiles are usually cheaper than hotel phones.

Many hotels now offer wifi connectivity, so with a laptop you can have broadband access in your room (or sometimes only in the public areas). This enables you to keep in touch via email, text chat (ICQ, msn, etc) and Skype.