Bleisure travel

Bleisure travellers can be described as “individuals who combine leisure with professional business obligations when abroad[4]”.

The elements characterising bleisure travellers are different, and this makes it difficult to draw a defined profile of these individuals. Bleisure is a widespread practice among US travellers, especially for those working in Technology, Healthcare, Public Administration sectors. A report shows that US traveller add bleisure to nearly half of the cases, precisely 52% for International trips and 42% for domestic ones. The main reasons for travelling would be conferences and conventions, team building, client meetings and presentations..[5]

Bleisure travellers could be grouped according to various aspects, in particular gender, age and trip frequency.[6]

A research indicates that female business travellers would be more likely to take bleisure trips than male. In both groups 20% of travellers would take one or more bleisure trips in a year time, however women register higher rate: 8.5% against 6.8% of men.[notes 1]

Younger travellers (between 20 and 25) look significantly more likely to add weekends to their business trips, measuring a rate close to 15%. This result is two or three times higher than those for 45-50 age interval.[notes 2] Millennial travellers deserve a special attention because they appear to be the individuals shaping the future of business travel, nearly twice likely to travel for business than Baby Boomers.[3] Millennials may work from home often or during the evening hours, and dedicate traditional working hours to leisure activities. In comparison to other age groups, Millennials are more likely to take bleisure trips. However, it is not clear whether this reflects unique preferences or transitory life events.[notes 3]

Frequent travellers taking 20 trips or more per year seem to be less than 5% likely to take a bleisure trip during the year, they would account for 8% of all bleisure trips. By contrast, one third of all bleisure trips would be taken by employees travelling once a month.

It seems evident that Millennials workers are increasingly demanding for bleisure from their work trip. Despite the state-of-the-art technology available nowadays, Millennials still prefer face-to-face meetings to get business done, therefore travel is still important for business companies.[7]

Bleisure travel looks as a good opportunity to save on travel expenses, mostly for those who do not take a lot of vacation: 66% of US business traveller spend more money on leisure activities because of the money they save on travel. 60% take bleisure trips because do not have a lot of regular vacations. To decide whether to turn a business travel into bleisure or not, employee takes into consideration travelling on exciting destinations, additional costs required to extend the trip, how close the trip is to the weekend, the number of night they must stay for business, how affordable the hotel is, whether they have friends or family in the area, whether they can bring friends or family along. The general trend would indicate the addition of one or two days as the most frequent option, only 23% of bleisure travellers would extend their trips for more than three days. In many cases leisure days equal (37%) or even exceed business days (42%). The length of business trip seems to be a crucial factor when considering extending the trip in 62% of cases. In particular, when business days are more than three, bleisure travellers are not only likely to extend the trip, but also to visit different cities in the area.[5]

For the employees:[8]

• Compromise between work duties and leisure time;
• Career development.
• Possibility to bring family or friend with them;
• Improvement of their well-being;

For the companies:

• Improvement of the knowledge about the culture of the location they’re visiting that would simplify business negotiations;
• Possibility to have happier and therefore more productive employees;
• Discounted rate offered by the hotels;
• Opportunity to recruit new workers and attempting to retain current ones.

The more likely bleisure destinations are cities offering a combination of different elements, which could allow the travellers to add leisure time to their business trip, such as sightseeing locations, sport venues and cultural events.[5]

The difference between the origin and the destination city seems to affect bleisure rates: in the case of domestic trips, the amount of bleisure is expected to be low because the two cities should be easily accessible and share similar culture. On the other hand, long intercontinental trips would offer the chance to know realities that are different from ordinary. Researches seem to confirm this trend: bleisure trips would account for 5.2% of the domestic trips and 9.7% of the international ones. The highest bleisure rate (18.4%) appears in international trips when the origin and destination cities are located in different geographical regions.[5]

The top bleisure cities in US are: Honolulu (above 20%), Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas (12-15%) NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Fort Lauderdale (9-12%). In Europe rates looks lower, this could be due to the shorter domestic and continental routes: Lisbon, Barcelona, Nice, Istanbul (8-11%), London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Rome, Geneva, Paris, Madrid (6-8%).[6]

Given that bleisure travel is a rising phenomenon, there is still no official regulation, therefore extending business trips for bleisure would have to be decided by management on a case-by-case basis. Some preventive measures[9] could be followed in advance to avoid misunderstanding.

• Companies have to differentiate between business and non-business amenities and declare what they are willing to pay for;
• Employees have to define when the business travel ends and when the leisure travel starts;
• Company and employees must arrange corporate travel insurance.