A single-city roadshow is a scheduling problem. A multi-city roadshow is a logistics problem wearing a scheduling problem's clothes. The meetings still have to run to time, but now the day also contains a train or a flight, a change of vehicle, a new chauffeur who has never met the party, and a set of materials that has to arrive in the right city in the right condition.
The teams that make this look easy are not improvising well. They have built the itinerary in a particular order, put one person in charge of the moving parts, and made a small number of decisions early that remove most of the ways a week like this comes apart. Here is how that is put together, and where the failures actually cluster.
Where multi-city itineraries break
The failure points are consistent and none of them are the meetings themselves. They are the joins: the gap between the last appointment in one city and the departure that gets everyone to the next, the arrival into an unfamiliar terminal at an awkward hour, and the first morning in a city where nobody knows how long anything takes. A schedule that is comfortable within each city can still be impossible between them.
The second cluster of failures involves information. A chauffeur in the third city knows only what he has been told, and if the party's composition changed after a colleague joined in the second city, he is planning for the wrong number of people. Multi-city work punishes fragmented briefing more severely than anything else in corporate travel, because there is no opportunity to correct it in person.
Building the schedule backwards
Start from the fixed points and work outwards. In most roadshows there are three or four appointments in the whole week that genuinely cannot move, and everything else is negotiable however firmly it appears in the diary. Establish those first, then place the inter-city legs around them, then fill in the local meetings. Building forwards from Monday morning produces an elegant plan that fails on Wednesday.
Once the intercity legs are fixed, be honest about the buffer around them. The temptation is to schedule a final meeting that finishes exactly when the party needs to leave for the airport, which works if nothing overruns and nothing ever does not overrun. Give the last appointment in each city a soft finish and treat the buffer as part of the itinerary rather than as slack to be reclaimed later.
One coordinator, one document
Multi-city work fails when three people each hold part of the picture. Appoint a single coordinator who owns the transport across every city, even where local offices are arranging their own cars, and give that person the authority to change things without convening anybody. The coordinator does not need to be senior; they need to be the only person the suppliers hear from.
Keep everything in one document that travels with the party, updated in place rather than reissued as versions. Every chauffeur in every city should have been briefed from the same source. The document does not need to be elaborate, but it needs to contain a specific set of things.
- The full itinerary by city, with fixed points marked as immovable
- Passenger names by leg, since the party often changes between cities
- Luggage and materials count, updated as items are added or shipped ahead
- Collection points described by building entrance, not only by postcode
- The coordinator's contact details, and a named deputy for each city
- Chauffeur arrangements for each leg, including who meets whom and where
- What the party does if a meeting overruns, decided in advance per city
Handovers between cities
The handover is the point of maximum vulnerability, because the party arrives tired in a place they may not know, and the incoming chauffeur has no context. Brief the receiving chauffeur properly before the party lands: who is arriving, how many bags, whether they want quiet or conversation, where they are going first, and whether anything about the previous city has changed the plan.
Decide in advance how the meeting happens at each arrival point, and tell the travellers as well as the supplier. A party expecting to be met inside the terminal and a chauffeur waiting at a set-down point can spend twenty minutes a hundred metres apart. State it once, clearly, in the itinerary document, and repeat it in the message the travellers receive the night before.
Luggage, materials and the boot
Roadshow parties carry more than ordinary business travellers: overnight bags for the week, presentation materials, samples or display items, and by the third city an accumulation of things acquired along the way. Boot capacity is the constraint that most often forces a vehicle change at the kerb, and it is entirely preventable by counting items rather than estimating them.
Consider shipping the bulky materials between cities separately rather than moving them with the party. It costs a little in coordination and removes a great deal of friction, particularly where the inter-city leg is by air. If the materials must travel with the group, say so at booking and specify a vehicle chosen for load space rather than only for seating, because those are not the same requirement.
Contingency that is actually usable
Contingency plans written as prose are never read. What works is a short set of pre-agreed responses to the four or five things that realistically happen, each with a named decision-maker so nobody is seeking permission while a car waits. Agree them at the planning stage when everyone is calm, and put them on the last page of the itinerary document.
The list below covers most of what a week like this throws up. Keep it to one page, and make sure every traveller has seen it before the first departure rather than discovering it exists on the Wednesday.
- A meeting overruns: who decides whether to hold the car or release it
- A flight or train is disrupted: who rebooks and who tells the next city
- A traveller joins or leaves the party: who updates the vehicle bookings
- The party is delayed into a city overnight: who arranges the morning car
- A chauffeur cannot attend: the supplier's process and the escalation contact
- Materials fail to arrive: who is authorised to arrange a replacement locally
