Do you know why travel should be an essential part of building your business? Despite the modern convenience of telecommuting, traveling for your business gives you many benefits that you won’t get sitting in your office and going online. The truth is, there really is something to be said about leaving your office environment every once in a while to see what’s going on outside of it. Business travel is an investment that, when done right, will keep earning good returns. Let us show you how travel can help your business.

Here, we list six things you get to do that emphasize the wonderful purpose of business travel:

1. Connect with people in your industry. 

Iñigo Alvero, one of the managing partners of Commune, a café in Poblacion, Makati, knows the value of expanding one’s business network outside his usual circles.

“When we travel to attend conferences, fairs, trainings or trade shows, we’re able to learn more about our trade by connecting with communities who are in the same line of business,” Alvero says. “We’re exposed to new ideas and concepts which we can apply to our business. At the same time, we get to tell them about our brand.”

2. Boost your R & D. 

This is one of the main reasons why business travel is important. Gulife Vegetable Pasta, a homegrown brand that makes vegetable-based products for picky eaters, is run by its CEO, Nikki Quilicot. She stands by the importance of doing research and development for her company while traveling.

“One of our partners traveled to Italy recently and brought home different pastas, giving us a standard of what authentic Italian pasta should be,” Quilicot says. “It’s exciting to learn from other countries and see what technologies and products we can make here in the Philippines.”

3. Think more creatively.

Exposing yourself to different cultures opens your eyes to a world beyond ideas you’re familiar with. According to an article written by Barnaby Lashbrooke for Forbes (Why Does Business Travel Make Some of Us Strangely Productive?), some business travelers look forward to the rush of fresh ideas that they get while traveling, as should you. New experiences remove you from the vacuum that is your office and inevitably spark creativity. The new perspective you develop while traveling could trigger a fresh marketing campaign or even just show you how to tackle a nagging work problem.

Once you gain this new line of thinking, all you’ll need then is reliable Internet connection to email your staff back home and relay your ideas!

4. Get insights on your market.

When one of Quilicot’s business partners, Rose Cabrera, traveled to Kawayan, Tacloban, she got to see a community eating vegetable pasta that a nun came up with in the harrowing aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda.

“Rose saw first-hand how healthy and happy the kids were eating the nutritious food,” says Quilicot. “This sparked the idea to start Gulife. It was inspiring to see people thriving on healthy food in the face of a calamity. We wanted to spread that kind of diet to our consumers.

5. Easily close deals through face-to-face meetings with clients.

“Nearly half of businesspeople say they’ve lost a contract or client due to not having enough face-to-face meetings, and that doesn’t include those who haven’t realized it was the reason for their defeat,” writes Jordan Bishop, in his article Business Travel Continues to Gain in Importance. Bishop adds that most of the communication you make — body language and facial expressions —is lost when you conduct business through emails and conference calls. These are vital in gaining your clients’ trust.

6. Maintain relationships with long-term clients.

Clients, especially the ones you’ve had for years, are just like friends—they need sincere attention. What better way to give yours to your long-term clients than by regularly meeting with them face-to-face? Aside from saying hi, it would also be the perfect venue for you to give them progress reports on your projects together, and perhaps show them a lineup of possible future projects. Remember, when you travel many miles just to meet with your clients, it shows them that they are important to you. You won’t get that much confidence from a client pecking out emails to them.

These six points demonstrate that traveling for business is not an unnecessary expense. It’s an investment that will definitely help bring your business to further heights. So the next time you think about staying put to oversee your business, consider the pros of flying the coop.

Here’s something that will make presenting to clients during your business travels a breeze: the Samsung S10, with its next level display and next level camera.