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Executive support · Work sample: fictional scenario, synthetic data

Plan a two-stop business trip within a $1,600 budget

Flights, hotels and rides checked against a traveler's rules, with a cost table, an itinerary and a fallback plan.

The recommended plan costs $1,466 against a $1,600 budget. The fallback plan is $19 over, at $1,619.

Time taken
75 min (time box)
Tools
Excel, Microsoft 365
AI used
Claude
Skills
Travel planning, Budget trade-offs, Time-zone planning, Contingency planning
Date
Itinerary table for the recommended plan, from Monday, November 2 to Thursday, November 5, with local time, Eastern time, details and confirmation for each leg

As it arrived

Book whatever makes sense, under $1,600 all-in. I need to be back for my son's school event Friday, Nov 6 at 6:00 PM in Charlotte. Send me the plan and anything I need to decide by Monday noon ET.

Quick look

Cost table comparing the recommended plan at $1,466 and the fallback plan at $1,619 against the $1,600 budget, with a second-method check that both totals tie out
Cost table against the $1,600 budget, checked a second way
Summary for Dana: the plan day by day, the total, and two decisions she needs to make
The summary for Dana: 150 words, two decisions

Deliverables

The details

Two stops in the first week of November, leaving from and returning to Charlotte: a spring-assortment meeting with the buyer in Bellevue on Wed, Nov 4, 10:00–11:30 AM PT, and a peak-readiness walk-through at the Reno warehouse on Thu, Nov 5. Home by 6:00 PM on Fri, Nov 6.

The traveler’s rules: no flight before 7:00 AM, no overnight flights, aisle seat only, connections of 60 minutes or more, arrive the day before any external meeting, and a hotel within 15 minutes of the meeting when possible. Budget: $1,600 all-in. Decisions due by Monday noon ET.

My approach

  1. Listed the traveler’s rules and hard constraints before assessing any option.
  2. Assessed every flight and hotel option against those rules and recorded the result in a decision log.
  3. Ran timing tests and checked for clashes with her existing commitments.
  4. Priced two plans on one cost table and checked the totals a second way. Plan B, recommended, comes to $1,466 and Plan A to $1,619.
  5. Wrote the itinerary, a contingency for the most fragile leg, two emails and a summary for the traveler (150 words, two decisions).
  6. Ran a pre-send checklist on the workbook.

What I delivered

  • Decision log: the rules, every option assessed, timing tests and calendar clashes.
  • Costs: the cost table against the $1,600 budget.
  • Itinerary: the recommended plan, with the fallback if the Reno walk-through cannot move.
  • Contingency: the plan for the most fragile leg.
  • Messages: emails to the buyer and to the warehouse lead.
  • QA run: the pre-send checklist result.

What I’d do with more time

Fill in the seven booking references and the sign-offs, which stay as placeholders because nothing in a practice scenario is booked. I would also export the decision log to PDF at a larger size, since the one-page version is small. The first review caught two real errors (a false reason for rejecting one option, and contradictory Friday times in the fallback plan), so I now run the pre-send checklist before the first review, not after it.

How I used AI

Claude created this practice simulation and reviewed my output. The plan and recommendations are mine.