Besides taking care of travel matters, the survey found business travelers use mobile and social applications to take care of personal items, explore the local area and connect with friends and family.

Checking the latest sports scores, updating Facebook, looking for the nearest coffee spot and tweeting were also highly rated in the recent survey. In addition, 61 percent of all business travelers were burning the midnight oil online – not on business from the day – but on managing their personal lives remotely.

The younger business traveler was even more focused on finding personal balance. Nearly one third of younger business travelers, ages 25 to 34, were more likely to order perks that make their hotel stay more comfortable; over 40% tweet about their travels and 65% enjoy updating Facebook to let everyone know where they are.

"This group is extremely adept at enjoying their careers while still finding personal time on the road, and it’s increasingly important that we address their wants and needs," said Tom Santora, chief marketing officer for Omni Hotels & Resorts.

When asked what hotel Wi-Fi is used for at night other than work, 61% of business travelers said they randomly surf the web, while others use the time to catch up with life outside of work. Also in the survey, 49% of business travelers pay bills online and 34% Skype or chat with their family at home.

Just over half – 55% – of the business travelers surveyed said they never tweet while on a business trip, and only 11% said they tweet often. Among those who said they would tweet during a hotel stay, positive experiences, such as free room upgrades (70%) and free Wi-Fi (62%) were more likely to incent a tweet than negative ones. The survey found an overbooked hotel to be the one negative that would likely put guests in a tweeting mood.
 

If you need a refresher on Facebook, it’s a good article to read. Of interest? Two uses of Facebook, that appear to be polar opposites.

Exhibit A

I watched a 23-year-old family friend, PK, solicit expert opinions gathered around his laptop asking which of the “hotties” he was connected to on Facebook he should pursue.

Exhibit B

“For the final exam, we had to learn the historical significance of something like 500 pieces of art from that period.”…Zuckerberg went to the course Web site, downloaded all the images and made a new site with a page for each image, along with a box to add comments. Then he forwarded the site’s link to the class list. Within an hour or two, a bunch of his classmates visited the site and filled out all the information about the photos…eventually getting an A in the class.

While I know which research I would rather have conducted in college, I know in reality I would have been staring at a lot of Roman art.

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