The man whose business is travel: take advantage of Europe's economic cycles

Cycles: good to ride if you are a human and they are the two-wheeled kind, uncomfortable to ride if you are a business and they are the economic type.

Aviation, indeed, is about the most cyclical of industries because it is susceptible to everyone else's business cycles: a slowdown in demand for cars, cameras or cauliflowers can have a significant effect on business travel. The airline business is also sensitive to what I shall term "micro-cycles": the swings in economic activity that occur in the space of a year or even a week. And if you are a business traveller, you may able to adjust your patterns of behaviour to smooth out these fluctuations - good news for the airline, but more importantly for you.

I started thinking about this while travelling through Europe this summer. In Bucharest, the shutters were being metaphorically closed as early as mid-June. I joined the final Sunday brunch at the city's best address, the Novotel on Calea Victoriei; the Sabbath ritual will be reinstated only when the Romanian capital wakes from its slumbers at the end of August.

Cities that make a bigger mark on Europe's business map may not suspend activities for so long, but they still slow almost to an economic standstill. Italy's commercial capital, Milan, bids the business world arrivederci at the end of July and its executives escape to the mountains for August. Trying to get a sensible answer from your opposite number in Frankfurt or Munich may be tricky at this time of year, because he or she is likely to be indulging in some much-needed wanderlust.

In France, the summer vacances have been elevated to an art form. The annual holiday is a prized ritual - so cherished, indeed, that you wonder that the nation can continue to function at all. Some workers take the whole of July off; more opt for the month of August as a work-free zone; and a considerable contingent prefers to down tools for the Bastille Day festivities on 14 July, not to pick them up again for four more weeks.

Some can cite valid reasons for collective closedowns: if both parents are working and their school-aged children are on holiday through the eighth month of the year, it is easy to understand that the family might want to escape to the seaside for as long as possible. But other arguments are unsustainable. For example, the assertion "there's no point being at work because there's no customers/suppliers to talk to" is self-fulfilling. In the US, which happens to be by far the world's biggest economy, there is no nationwide annual closedown; if you want to buy some widgets or sell some dreams in mid-August in sun-roasted Nevada, you will find people willing and able to trade.

Neither will "it's too hot" suffice as an excuse to lie down in a darkened room or on a sun-blessed beach for a week or two. Air-conditioning makes it possible to conduct business in Abu Dhabi or Arizona with the outdoor temperature way over 100F, so physical discomfort is no longer a good excuse for geographical relocation.

In contrast, there are plenty of reasons to work right through the summer. If rivals go into commercial deep-freeze for a few weeks, doing exactly the opposite is a good strategy: buck the trend and be available to customers. While airports are bursting with holidaymakers, business flights within Europe are traditionally much quieter at holiday times - meaning more room and lower average fares, particularly if you book in advance. I flew from Gatwick to Luxembourg on Easter Sunday: so quiet was the airport, and the aircraft, that my bicycle appeared within moments, and reached the city centre at about the time we were supposed to be touching down. Thank heavens for cycles.