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lan G. Robinson, a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, took his teenage daughter, Phoebe, on a business trip to Hong Kong last December. And Phoebe, then 16, made the most of it.

At the audiovisual presentation that her father was giving to a conference, she worked on stage handling the equipment, and she listened to the other speakers. With her father, she read "Taipan," James Clavell's historical novel set in the founding days of Hong Kong, and she toured the city and Macao with him, led by a former assistant police commissioner.

She had already had a lot of practice tagging along with him on his business journeys. By the time she was 5, she had been to Japan three times. When she was 7, she and her mother and younger sister accompanied him on a three-month sabbatical in Greece, and when she was 11, her father took Phoebe along on a business trip to Greece and hired a guide to show her around Athens for two and a half days.

Travel with family "is about connecting up with the world and putting pieces together,'' Professor Robinson said. "We don't sit on the beach; we explore and do very adventurous things."

While two surveys by Wyndham International, one in 2003 and one in 1999, show that about four out of five business travelers almost never take their children with them, the enthusiastic minority that do view the experience as a great way to bond with their children and educate them at the same time. Often, they tack on vacation days to extend their stay; sometimes, they bring a spouse, nanny or parent along to share the child care.

The planning can be complicated, with school schedules to worry about, child care (and entertainment) to be organized, hotels with child-friendly amenities to search for, extra costs to calculate and the employer's or host's attitude to gauge, among other considerations.

Nancy Walsh, executive vice president at Reed Exhibitions, a trade show management firm in Norwalk, Conn., has taken her two children, April, 12, and Christian, 9, on business trips from the time they were small. In Orlando in September for the Florida Restaurant Show, she hired a baby sitter at the Peabody Orlando to take her daughter to Universal Studios during the day. At night, she took her daughter to dinner.

"Most business hotels have baby sitters, who are much more expensive than what you pay at home, like per hour, and usually require a four-hour minimum," said Ms. Walsh, who brought her children's nanny along when they were infants. "My son loves Las Vegas, so I take him to Circus Circus and MGM Grand for its video arcade and shows.''

Minisuites or suites are often preferred, since the extra space means children can play while the parent works and the refrigerator can store snacks and beverages.

William M. Kotis III, president of Kotis Properties Inc., a restaurant developer and broker in Greensboro, N.C., often takes his son, Alex, who is under 2 years old, to conferences and business events if he knows the people or if it's a fairly relaxed environment. When he does, he says, "I typically stay in a limited-service hotel like the Hampton Inn, which has a milk dispenser you can use in the middle of the night.''

Alex is already "a discriminating diner at the country's top restaurants, from Morton's of Chicago to Ruth's Chris Steak House," Mr. Kotis noted cheerfully, even if his suit was once doused with projectile vomit on one of those excursions.

Several hotel chains have risen to the challenge of catering to business travelers with families. Homewood Suites by Hilton, which estimates that at least 20 percent of its guests combine a working trip with family time, is introducing a program for this segment in its 138 all-suite hotels, primarily in the Southeast, and posts travel tips on traveling with children on its Web site.

Lisa Froehlich, a senior administrative assistant at Otis Elevator in Chattanooga, Tenn., and the single parent of two daughters, 14 and 6, brings both when she travels to Nashville during the summer or during their holiday breaks. She stays at Homewood Suites in Brentwood, a suburb, for the free hot breakfast; free light dinner at happy hour Monday through Thursday (and weekends, too, in some leisure destinations), which may feature lasagna or meat loaf; and a kitchen fully stocked with stove, microwave, refrigerator and dishes.

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