Many of us have to fly for business, and it can be quite difficult, as a new traveller, to get to grips with how to pack and what to wear, especially if you have to get off the plane, sometimes after a long flight, and get straight into a meeting, conference or negotiation.

Here are a few tips to help the novice business traveller look right and feel right and hit the ground running:

Carry your jacket onto the plane. It’s difficult to keep a formal suit looking good on a long flight, but certain kinds of jacket were made for business travel: tweet is pretty well uncrushable and looks great with a smart white cotton shirt. When you take it off and put it in the overhead locker, make sure you fold it carefully and lay it on top of your case, not beside it, or your jacket will end up crushed at the back of the locker by somebody else’s bag.

Wear a shirt with a top pocket – this can hold your passport and travel tickets but never put pens in shirt pockets because they tend to leak under cabin pressure and that’s the end of a good shirt and the way to make yourself look like a geek in a business meeting!

Put a plain white T-shirt in your carry on luggage. On a long flight you can take of that good white shirt and pull on a plain T-shirt to travel in. That means your shirt, neatly folded into your hand-luggage, stays fresh and you can relax and drop your meal down the front of your T-shirt without worrying that it will be seen by the people meeting you at the other end! And if the worst comes to the worst and you are trapped in an airport, you’ve got a change of clothes with you.

Wear zip up or slip-on boots. This means you can get your boots on and off easily for security without the hassle of laces for trainers. They look good enough for a business meeting too.

Try a dry cleaning kit!

In these difficult times we’re all thinking about saving money. What about cutting your dry cleaning bills?

If you’re looking for cheap dry-cleaning, the Hagerty Dry Cleaning Kit could be the perfect answer. It works by utilising your own tumble dryer.

First you use the supplied special stain-removing cloth to spot clean any marks, on the clothing, then you simply put your garments, the cloth and the bag in the tumble dryer. The heat of the dryer activates the chemicals impregnated in the cloth and they gently clean and freshen your clothing. It can be used on virtually any item from a tie, or dress right up to a coat.

The advantages of the kit are clear: for a cost of £8.99 it can clean up to 16 items in total. I don’t think there are any high street dry cleaners who charge 56p per garment! In addition to the cost saving, there’s the time element you don’t have to go out to the shops twice to drop off and then collect your clothing. There is one downside though: although the kit will clean your clothes, you may still need to get them pressed, or iron them yourself.

I haven’t used the kit myself yet, but if it works as well as Hagerty claim, it will be flying off the shelves in the next few months.

The Hagerty Dry Cleaning kit is available from Lakeland and costs £8.99 plus delivery.

If you’ve have had a good experience with the kit please let me know and I’ll share it with other readers.