Twenty down. Ten to go. Kathleen Ameche and her husband, Bob, both avid baseball fans, are well on their way to visiting every single Major League Baseball stadium in America. But considering their already busy business travel schedule—she's on the road 30 percent of the time (and that's "nothing compared to what I used to be")—it's not always easy to plan extra trips away. Their solution? Tie their baseball mania and their business travel together. "We make it a weekend of baseball and exploring a city together," says Ameche.

A self-described "road warrior" for the last two decades, Ameche is a vice president at West Monroe Partners, a Chicago-based business and technology consulting firm, and the author of The Woman Road Warrior (Agate Publishing). "I believe business travel has a lot to do with attitude," she says. She and her husband, an attorney and real estate developer, turn about 30 percent of their individual business trips into mini getaways, adding that combo traveling has become much easier since she and her husband became empty nesters. "When there were kids at home, there was a lot more planning. We had to do a lot more juggling," she says.

The Ameches are not alone in their devotion to combining business trips with personal pursuits. According to the 2004 Business and Convention Travelers Report from the Travel Industry of America, the National Business Travel Association and the Institute of Business Travel Management, 62 percent of business travelers "add a leisure component" to one or more business trips per year, and two-thirds of that group bring a family member or friend along on the trip. "The economics of it are such that it makes sense to squeeze in a mini vacation. It's always been part of our mix, but we're also seeing more growth," says David Olender, vice president of sales administration for Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment.

"We are definitely seeing a trend [of growth] year after year of business travelers bringing a spouse or partner on the road," says Bill Duncan, the Memphis, Tenn.-based vice president of brand marketing and sales for Homewood Suites by Hilton. About 20 percent of the business travelers who stay at a Homewood property bring along a spouse or partner. Although Duncan says trips of a couple of nights are still pretty much solo affairs, "We tend to see it kick up once they're on the road for three or four nights or longer."

While spouse programs used to focus on the wives of company executives, things have, to put it mildly, changed. Nowadays, the tagalongs are just as likely to be male as female and, with travelers not as in need of hand-holding as they used to be, they tend "to go off and do something on their own," says Theresa Breining, president of the Carlsbad, Calif.-based meeting planning company Concepts Worldwide. She adds that meeting planners are beginning to find they act "more as a guidebook...than a group planner. We're dealing with a much more sophisticated traveler."

That's not to say that spouse programs aren't planned anymore—they just take different forms than they did back in the day when everybody was shepherded to the same events. At Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Hotel, vice president and general manager David Benton says he often acts as an intermediary between meeting planners and local attractions. "We love to do it, because we know everybody in town," he says. This leads to VIP access to events, top tour guides, and guests who end up loving Philadelphia. "We want to get involved and do whatever we can. Meeting planners may not know the city," he adds.

Before you book
Many sources agree: The most important step to take before booking a ticket for your spouse or partner is to figure out how he or she will fit into your business plans. Study the agenda before the trip to figure out your commitments and see whether there's flexibility in the schedule, says Ameche. Full-day seminars don't leave much time for fun and could lead to some serious guilt back in the hotel room every evening. If that's the case, consider tacking days onto the shoulder of the business trip and have your spouse join you on the final day or after everything wraps up, suggests Breining.

While bringing a spouse along can up the fun factor on a business trip, Tom Anderson, founder and managing partner of Connecticut-based market research consultancy Anderson Analytics, says his spouse also plays a vital role in the business part of his business trips: "She keeps my schedule organized and also helps me network at social/business events. She is also there to help out with any last-minute issues that come up, so that the trip can be more effective."

Her help also helps out the bottom line. "The IRS says spouse travel is taxable income to an employee, unless the spouse performs some business function and the company benefits somehow from the spouse coming along," says Anderson.

But before you rush off to hand your spouse your datebook, it's important to find out your company or industry guidelines about spouse travel. These days, thanks to the post-Enron era Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which governs compliance of accounting practices to stave off fraud, some corporate sectors and publicly traded companies are putting the kibosh on staffers bringing a family member along on business trips—even when the employee is willing to foot the bill.

Sarbanes-Oxley "requires greater transparency on the part of corporations," says Concepts Worldwide's Breining. "Corporations have a greater responsibility for reporting details of meetings, and one of those issues is spouse or partner travel." In cases where the tagalong can be justified—like sales meetings where a spouse can help motivate the employee—all is fine (or fine enough), but "for corporate meetings, we are having more of our clients say not only are we not going to pay [for spouse travel], but we're actively going to discourage them [from attending]."

That said, if Sarbanes-Oxley isn't standing in your way, taking a mate along—especially if you spend a lot of your time on the road—might be the best thing you can do for your relationship. Says Ameche of her frequent round-the-world (and round-the-baseball-stadiums) rendezvous with her husband: "It's kind of romantic if you take advantage of it."

JENNA SCHNUER is a freelance writer based in New York.

Keep in mind...
Make sure your mate understands the business demands of the trip. "I think the employee needs to be very clear about what the guidelines are," says Breining. "If there's an expectation that you'll spend every evening together, it could be a bad experience for everybody."

Tack on some personal time to a meeting or conference by flying in early or staying the weekend after. Some hotels will gladly extend the corporate rate to your personal days at the location.

Make sure your industry—and company—is open to it. If you're not sure of your company policies, ask.

Plan to pay the way for your spouse or partner. Since some cost-conscious companies like to pair staffers up with roommates on trips, employees who choose to bring along a spouse should pay for half the room, says Breining."

Spontaneity is great, but doing a little bit of planning" before you go makes it that much better, says Ameche. A great starting point: Many hotels now offer information about local events and sightseeing opportunities on their Web sites. Once you're in town, make the most of the concierge services to figure out how to spend your free time.

Case Study: Le Gourmet Gift Basket, Inc.
Many of Cynthia McKay's staffers live much of their business life on the road. But eight years ago, one of the head trainers in her company, Le Gourmet Gift Basket, Inc., told her he wanted to cut back—and cut back big—on his on-the-road life. He was desperate to spend more time with his wife. "I thought, 'I can fix that,'" says McKay, the company's founder and CEO. So, instead of cutting the trainer's schedule back, she amped up his wife's travel schedule—and sent them on the road together.

Now it's business as usual for McKay's employees to head out with family members in tow. About 30 percent of staff business trips include a plus-one ticket. McKay says employee morale is the number one reason she loves sending people out on the road with a spouse or other family member. It's "particularly good for employees going through burnout," she says.

An advocate of avoiding problems before they even become problems, McKay developed a travel handbook for family members. She requests that they dress professionally while on the plane (since you never know who you're sitting near) and to make themselves "fairly nonvisible" during the business portion of the trip. Business definitely comes first.

Though some of the spouse travel is paid for by the employee, McKay often ponies up the dollars—or airline miles—herself. "I can include it as an employee bonus" for tax purposes, she says. And she's even been known to hire a spouse or two as independent contractors to assist with the training.

McKay says her staffers, including the head trainer who kicked it all off, are clearly more loyal to the company because of the program. One even brought her back a pile of chocolate macadamia nuts from Hawaii. Now that's a sweet benefit.