Perking up business travel

LONDON, England (CNN) -- How do you make a good travel experience out of a business trip? There may be times when quick and efficient transfers and check-ins are what is most important from a excursion, but with the holiday season almost upon us, even the most hardened road warriors will be forgiven for thinking more about winding down for the year than business.

Some airlines use the Christmas and New Year period to discount their business class seats and offer some extra perks. With the weak dollar, transatlantic carriers have been full to the brim with leisure and business travelers keen to take advantage of favorable exchange rates.

All-business class airline Silverjet has spotted an attractive way to get bums on seats and give time-pressed business travelers a helping hand in their Christmas present buying with a retail therapist. Passengers on the airline's flights from London to New York and Dubai get the benefit of British journalist Lucia van der Post's extensive shopping knowledge.

Passengers provide the grand-dame of luxurious living and style with a wish-list of presents before their trip. In return, van der Post compiles present advice and an itinerary of the best places to find them, thereby avoiding the tiresome task of battling through hoards of tourists and Christmas shoppers and hopefully making the experience as pleasant as possible.

For many, though, Christmas shopping might seem more a chore rather than a good way to make the most of their down-time on a business trip. Falling short of a personal assistant or good old fashioned butler to do the leg work for you, an online concierge service could the next best thing.

GetFriday and Ask Sunday are two companies catering for a growing demand among time-poor professionals and business travelers for someone else to deal with life's tedious chores.

For $15 an hour, customers with GetFriday -- an Indian company based in Bangalore -- are paired with a personal assistant. The customer can call or email their overseas assistant, calling them by their first name (for that personal touch) and request almost anything, from helping to draft documents to more everyday chores such as paying bills that they might not be able to pay because they are away on business.

Avinash Samudrala, co-founder of Ask Sunday, says that they have clients from Sydney to Switzerland and research teams in cities across Asia as well as the U.S. and Canada who scour the Internet to meet any requirement. Typically each request will take 20 minutes to complete with customers receiving a call or e-mail to confirm it has been completed.

Tips on what to do while away on work and having a service that can take care of business back home can up the fun and decrease the stress levels of trips away, but for a more personal touch, ditching the guide book and using a bespoke travel service to plot something alternative and unforgettable is the ultimate indulgence for road warriors making the most of their time away.

Canadian company Trufflepig is a bespoke travel firm that caters for high-end travelers and those with a demanding disposition to be shown something exceptional.

Founder Charlie Scott and his small team of luxury travel hunters use their extensive travel knowledge and local contacts to organize trips catered to their clients' desires and budgets, either giving them a detailed itinerary or putting them in contact with locals or guides.

While the company mainly plans longer trips, they do have clients that call them up at short notice.

"It's not something we specifically cater for at the moment, but we do get last-minute requests from previous clients who might call us from Rome for example and want a good place to eat or to be put in touch with great local guides. We're not built in the way that we can do much of this short notice stuff, we want to be, but we're just not at the moment," Scott told CNN.

"It's a bit like a having a suit made at a tailors. Once you've had a couple of suits made, you might come back and say 'I've got a really special dinner, can you help pick out a tie for me.' So, with short, last-minute trips, we're making the odd tie as it were for people we already have a relationship with."

While it doesn't come cheap -- prices can run from anything from $500 a day to well over $1,000 -- there is the possibility of the added personal touch when Scott or one of his colleagues embark on a trip with the clients.

"One client was a phenomenally last minute planner. He'd had some business in Paris and called me up on Friday at noon. The next day I was on a plane to France and on Monday we met him in Dijon and went biking in the vineyards in Burgundy for two days before he had to fly back to the States." E-mail to a friend