When it comes to stopovers, there is one thing on which business travellers all seem to agree. Schiphol airport is a hateful place to have to change flights. Hard to disagree, in my experience - but I would also reserve a special place for the chilly Brussels Eurostar terminal.
Stopovers - or layovers, as North Americans call them - are just about tolerable for airline loyalty club members whose cards let them into a lounge. (If you are one of them, and you specifically want to break your journey in, say, Dubai, then here's a tip: choose the "multiple destinations" option on Expedia, Travelocity or Opodo and buy two singles separately. The total cost is quite often not much more than that of a return.)
But if yours doesn't let you do that, it's certainly worth checking out the airport's website. Even Schiphol (www.schiphol.nl), on closer inspection, turns out to be somewhat less undesirable than its critics like to claim. An annexe of the Rijksmuseum opened there last autumn: the opening hours are reasonable (7am to 8pm) and admission is free. Massages are available during the day for €15-€25. If all else fails, you can always take a shower at the Mercure Hotel on the first floor in Lounge West. It's open around the clock and for €12.50 there's a towel, soap and shampoo thrown in.
The Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in Airports, however - whose name belies its usefulness to business travellers - ranks Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea bottom, closely followed by Boston Logan, Cairo, Charles de Gaulle and Detroit. But which is the best?
Singapore's Changi (www.changi.airport.com.sg) - "hands down", apparently. "It is comfortable, safe, quiet - so quiet in fact that students study there during exams," writes the site's author, Donna McSherry.
Matthew Gamser, the US-born director of a London-based development consultancy and veteran of an unscheduled 10-day layover in Khartoum during a government coup, agreed. "The best airport for layovers has to be Changi. It has a gym, movie theatre, great food. You can kill lots and lots of hours there."
"But, of course, that airport works, so you rarely have a long layover," he adds. "It's when you're in the places with no good food, no place to sit, bad climate control, no other amenities that you always have the long layover - Nairobi, Guayaquil, Isla del Sol... What would I do if I could organise a layover in advance? I'd like a place to shower with some temporary clothing - a robe, or something like that, as I always have my clothes in my checked luggage - [and] a nice desk and wireless internet connection for work."
Unfortunately, the latter still tend to be confined to executive lounges. It is possible to use them if you're not a member of a loyalty card scheme, but you'll need to subscribe to a special scheme. Membership of the Priority Pass (www.prioritypass.com), for example, is $99 (£59), with each lounge visit costing an additional $24 (£14).
If that still seems an unjustifiable expense, the fastest way to find any airport site is usually via Google, but a number of independent sites publish lists of airport URLs of varying degrees of completeness; the best is probably Johnny Jet's (www.johnnyjet.com/folder/allairportlinks.html). And if you do decide to turn a stopover into a full-blown overnight stay, they generally list the real airport hotels - as opposed to the places 10 miles away which opportunistic hotel booking sites will try to sell you.
Business travel news
· United Airlines is introducing onboard email and text messaging services, but only on its domestic fleet. Sending texts will cost around £4, emails around £12. See www.ual.com/press/detail/0,1442,51106,00.html for details.
· Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) will stop accepting American Express cards at the beginning of July. The airline cited the "excessive" charges levied by the company.
· No-frills airline Basiq Air (www.basiqair.com) now flies to Amsterdam from Stansted. The cheapest tickets (from €9 each way) are available six weeks in advance.
· Japan Airlines (www.jal.com) is cutting the frequency of its Osaka-London and Tokyo-London flights until at least the end of August. Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd Express (www.hlx.com) has axed its Luton service to Cologne-Bonn, but still flies there from Manchester. Emirates, on the other hand, is increasing its flights to and from the UK with a third daily service to Dubai from Gatwick (www.emirates.com).
· Now - the Luton-based budget airline mentioned in a previous column, which will fly to Dusseldorf and Hamburg - has postponed its launch until the autumn (www.now-airlines.com). Jetmagic (www.jetmagic.com) starts flights from London City to Cork on August 18.
· The news that Poland will be joining the EU coincides with the opening of a new five-star hotel in Warsaw, the Westin. Sheraton, which has just finished the Tirana Hotel and Towers in Albania, will open another new hotel in Krakow next year (www.starwoodhotels.com).
· And Kyrgyzstan Airlines (www.kyrgyzstanairlines.kg/) begins a twice-weekly service to Gatwick on July 12.
