Vacation Tips for Business Owners

For many business owners, the thought of planning a summer vacation can be complicated at best and unthinkable at worst.

Concerns about customer or client care and anxiety about missed business opportunities can make many small-business owners feel they cannot take any time off.

Despite these worries, more than 67 percent of business owners still expect to take a break for at least one week this summer, according to an annual survey by OPEN from American Express, the company's small-business team.

"Small-business owners work very hard, and it's important that they take time off to recharge," said Alice Bredin, small-business adviser for OPEN from American Express. "Advance planning can make it easier for them to take a much-needed vacation and quell concerns about their companies running smoothly in their absence."

The following tips may help business owners justify some time off this summer and save some money as well:

* Plan ahead to save money. Some credit and charge cards allow cardmembers to earn points toward everything from airfare to car rentals to hotel stays and let them redeem points at virtually any airline with no blackout dates or restrictions. By using a charge card like the Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express throughout the year for business purchases, you can accumulate points quickly to help offset the cost of your next vacation.

* Brief key clients or customers. When possible, give them a minimum of two to three weeks' notice. Identify your stand-ins and communicate your confidence in their ability to help should a problem arise.

* Take a day trip or a three-day weekend. Sometimes a long getaway is just not in the cards. In that case, a brief escape with a change of scenery can do wonders and allow you to return to work rested and ed.

Kusadasi ideally connotes Bird Island. The Kusadasi Turkey sequences in a mind-blowing gulf in the Aegean region of Turkey. Kusadasi is known for its bluish-green glittering and brilliant water of the Sea. It has wide sandy beaches and the bright sun showing off.

The beach possess huge marina with the potential for handling 600 boats. Kusadasi also encompasses an ancient city called Ephesus. This city has a number of visitors from expeditions every year. The Adnan Menderes Airport resides near to this town. Enormous stunning villages queues its shores. Kusadasi also has in hand a variety of restaurants.

These hotels and restaurants sustain and nurture good food. The edibles available here are not those of Turkish tastes. Rather food and comestibles are a blend of all the best around the world. However, Turkish Cuisine is one commanding cuisines of the world. Apart from the buffets, Kusadasis discos, bars, cafes, pubs are famous all over the worlds.

The variety of entertainments endowed here attracts more and more tourists to this beautiful place. Kusadasi preserves natures beauty as it is, rather than updating with the better innovations that makes other tourist centers more artificial. Kusadasi Turkey enables one to enjoy the innocence of the nature more than any other country in the world.

Kusadasi town still involves less expansive shops. Many shops do a breakneck trade with passengers from many cruise ships without hindering the tourists tours and voyages. A splendid shopping expedition happens with a stupendous experience. The Pigeon Island is bolted to the mainland with a roadway.

The Kusadasi visionary setting includes a courteous and blooming flower garden. The garden is ultimately engulfed with the rejuvenated 14th or 15th century fortress restaurant. There is also a dazzling disco habituated by music lovers. The beaches get amalgamated with large crowds in the summer. Dilek Peninsula National Park is mostly known for its serene and unruffled atmosphere.

Kusadasi has a number of properties owned by foreigners for them to reside once in while on the banks of Kusadasi Turkey. Mostly British and Irish nationals pay for land in this part of Turkey.

There are many monuments and old museums that are preserved and updated by the Kusadasi Turkey. This makes the place livelier with the remembrance of a wonderful culture that existed in its prime long back. People of Kusadasi always maintain well-mannered behavior with respect on treating their visitors. Most of them work for their personal satisfaction rather than making money.

Kusadasi Turkey looks cool and stolid with the utopian monuments and the clear beaches. Both modernism and ancient culture can be seen in a blend without any interruptions. More and more people are daily being crowded in Kusadasi Turkey due to its calm and serene atmosphere.

This peace and tranquilizing air is what other tourist places lack. Kusadasi cannot be considered an excellent place for shopping. The beautiful emporiums and night shopping surprises the customers with rare shopping goods than the branded ones. Altogether, the many advantages make this place one of the best in Turkey.

You have heard about Thailand for many, many years. And your friends have gone to Pattaya and have told you stories that you just cannot imagine (even though they are true). You have finally bolstered up the courage to travel half-way around the world to see if fantasy can be a reality.

Hopefully you have done your homework. With the availability of the Internet, getting information is readily available. But you have to hunt all over the place to find it.

You have to read the Bangkok Post and the Pattaya City News. You have to hang out in the forums reading and asking questions. You have to take the abuse from the old timers for the stupid newbie questions. You read so many things that you head spins and you are trying to sort out what is true and what is BS.

You have enough to do with getting the plane ticket, passport, packing, and trying to remember everything.

What you need is a Newbie's Guide. This book written specifically for you: the guy going to Pattaya for the very first time. Even if you have been there before, you will still find some good info and save some money.

You can find out where to go and, more importantly, where not to go. You will get recommendations on bars, go-go's, restaurants and hotels.

Find out how to get through Suvarnabhumi International Airport and to you waiting taxi with ease. You even get a map of the airport.

You will also get trip reports. These update the basic book with current information and day-by-day experiences of the author.

Think about it. What would you rather do; fight through a mob of people and only to be ripped off by the taxi mafia, or have a driver waiting for you at half the price?

Do you want to waste time going to bars and restaurants that are the pits? Do you know that you can get a hotel room for under $20 per night? Have you decided where in Pattaya you will stay north, central or south?

Why spend hours, days, or weeks searching all over the Internet when you can get all the information you need in one downloadable eBook.

The eBook will set you back $20 and you will save that much when you book your taxi with the email address I provide in the book.

You will save time and money knowing which bars to frequent and which restaurants to eat at. You will save money booking your hotel online.

So, quit wasting your time surfing the 'net and pick up the eBook. It will make your Pattaya vacation so much better. Go crazy. Go Pattaya Crazy. Get the newbie's guie and save time and money. Have a great holiday.

Be warned. Once you go to Pattaya, you will be addicted for life.

If you are visiting a foreign country on business or pleasure you may buy some goodies to bring home. When you return to America, you will have to declare these items, and, if the value is too high, you may have to pay dearly.

So, what do you have to declare? Is it just souvenirs? Here is a list of what you have to tell the customs and immigration agents.

Items you purchased and are carrying with you upon return to the United States.

Items you received as gifts, such as wedding or birthday presents.

Items you inherited.

Items you bought in duty-free shops, on the ship, or on the plane.

Repairs or alterations to any items you took abroad and then brought back, even if the repairs/alterations were performed free of charge.

Items you brought home for someone else.

Items you intend to sell or use in your business.

Also, if you acquired items in the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, or in a Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act country (see section on $800 exemption for a list of these countries) and asked the merchant to send them to you, you must still declare them when you go through customs. This differs from the usual procedure for mailed items.

You must state on the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declaration, in U.S. currency, what you actually paid for each item. The price must include all taxes. If you dont know for sure, estimate. If you did not buy the item yourselffor example, if it is a giftestimate its fair retail value in the country where you received it.

Remember: Even if you used the item you bought on your trip, its still dutiable. You must declare the item at the price you paid or, if it was a gift, at its fair market value.

If the amount of your goods exceeds the exemption, you will have to pay on the spot. This can be very painful and costly. So, be prepared with your wallet open.

Check with the CBP web site before you go so that you know the rules and regulations. Plan your shopping accordingly and spare yourself the expense when you get home.

As a high school history teacher, I have had the privilege of bringing my senior students on tours of Europe for the past fifteen years. I never imagined that I would get so many opportunities to travel when I went into the teaching profession, but I ended up working in a great district that made room in their budget for the senior class to travel to Europe and help make history come alive for them each year. I am so blessed to be a part of a district that is so committed to giving their students real life experiences. I have learned many things during my years of leading this trips, but one of the first things I learned was that you cannot go to Europe and return home with a clean conscience unless you have taken time to visit one or many cathedrals.

Europe is so full of history, architecture and sheer beauty that there is obviously too much to do in a ten day tour. Since I get to lead this trips each year, I have gotten to see almost all of the wonders of Europe, but I must plan carefully each year to see that my students get the most out of their ten day experience. I am careful to combine adequate amounts of history, modern attractions, and time for fun on our trips. But any of my students will be quick to tell you that whether we are visiting Ireland or Italy, I will never lead a ten day trip without making my team experience at least one or two cathedrals

I am not sure what attracts me to cathedrals so much except their sheer beauty. I have looked far and wide in the U.S. and have never seen any building that compares with the detailed intricacies that most European cathedrals hold. I guess because our buildings are not nearly as old as those in Europe we have a far lower standard of what is beautiful and of what is true architecture. I love dragging my students into cathedrals and seeing their jaws drop as their realize just how much history has happened in these European countries and as they see how young America truly is.

So, the next time you plan a trip to Europe for any reason, make sure that your trip includes time visiting cathedrals. You will be amazed by their size, their beauty and their architecture, not to mention the amazing amounts of history that have happened in each cathedral. I guarentee you'll be looking for more cathedrals to visit once you begin.