The Diary and Travel Role
What people in this role do each day, and why it matters to the people they support.
8 min
Activities: 0 of 2
Looking after someone else's time
Many assistants, coordinators and administrators manage the diary of one or more managers and arrange their business travel. The job sounds simple: book meetings and book flights. In practice it means protecting a person's most limited resource, which is their time, and making sure that every journey is safe and works as planned.
When the role is done well, the manager arrives at each meeting on time, prepared and rested. When it is done badly, they miss meetings, sit in the wrong room, arrive at a hotel that has given their room away, or fly to a country they cannot enter.
A typical week
Two examples
Example 1: the project director's assistant. Zahra manages the diary of a project director who visits three sites each month. Her most valuable habit is adding the driving time between sites as diary entries. Before she started, the director was booked into meetings he could not physically reach.
Example 2: the team coordinator. Elvin books travel for a team of twelve engineers. He keeps a simple traveller profile for each person: passport expiry date, seat preference, meal requirements and an emergency contact. When an engineer must travel at one day's notice, Elvin has everything he needs.
Qualities that matter most
Which description best matches the purpose of the diary and travel role?
Match the term to its meaning
- Principal
- Traveller
- Itinerary
- Travel policy