Bleisure: Combining Business Trips with Leisure Experiences

Who says you can’t combine business with leisure?

Now more than ever, business travelers choose to get the most out of their work trips as more airlines change their approach to keep up with the demands and needs of the growing market.

Not too long ago, there were only two major classifications of passengers: leisure and business. These two unique types of travelers serve as the basis for strategizing schedules, fares, and service offerings.

But when the pandemic hit and put the whole world at a standstill, the world of air travel also changed, creating a blurry line between holiday and work travel.

What is Bleisure Travel?

Traveling for pleasure alone isn’t as simple as it seems, but people still do it because they want to experience and visit new places that they’ve never been to before.

On the other hand, business travel can also take a toll on people because the business demands usually mean missing out on the location and everything it has to offer. Most of the time, it happens without any leisure time or compensatory cultural experience at all.

This is where bleisure travel changes the landscape. Bleisure is the simple combination of business and leisure, and it’s exactly what its name suggests. Bleisure is the unique blend of business and leisure during a trip.

It often involves adding one to two days after or before a trip or stretching things out in the middle to fill this time with relaxing or enjoyable stuff.

Employees often pay for these additional days. However, since a discounted rate is available for extended hotel stays and plane tickets are already booked, employees usually enjoy a great deal.

Bleisure travel is often done alone, although there are instances when business people also arrange to travel with their family members or meet them at the set destination to enjoy a quick holiday at the same time while they’re doing their work.

This is a perfect way to ensure that the family remains close even when away from home. Although not everyone might want to have their family members with them on every business trip, it wouldn’t hurt to spend time with them now and then.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you are traveling with your family, colleagues, significant other, or all by yourself; bleisure travel is guaranteed to change how you feel the moment you read the email about an upcoming business trip.

What Paved the Way to the Trend of Bleisure Travel?

The COVID-19 pandemic was the reason why more people shifted to the work-from-home setup, forming a new standard that remained even after more offices started to reopen and welcome their employees again.

This means that employees can now go on trips even as they work remotely, learning more about new locations, environments, and cultures or taking part in self-care.

Most employers today are also big supporters of bleisure travel because it contributes to improved productivity, longer career tenures, and overall job satisfaction. Many people today agree that exploring and traveling to new places will encourage them to increase their work productivity. 

Who goes on Bleisure Travels?

Millennials are found to be the biggest fans of bleisure travel, with most of them purposefully carving out some personal time during their business trips.

However, millennials are not the only ones who love bleisure travel. The second-biggest group of bleisure travelers are found to be the employees who belong to Gen X between the ages of 36 and 54.

Expectations of Bleisure Travellers

Now that the pandemic has reached its end, combining business with leisure gives business travelers a chance to spend more time with their loved ones during their work trips. The result is that more and more bleisure travellers prefer adjoining or bigger hotel rooms to accommodate larger groups.

Since bleisure travelers still focus on their work more than anything else, accommodations with dedicated workspaces are seeing high demand as well. Less than half of employed travelers want to book accommodations with co-working spaces, while many flexible workers also cite it as something they would want to do.

Work hard and play hard. That’s the name of the game.

Even though the demand for bleisure travel was already present even before the start of the pandemic, this market only rose to full-blown popularity after the lockdowns across the world resulted in widespread travel disruptions.

As air travel’s demand continues to regain momentum, more and more business travelers opt to get the most out of their business trips by adding leisure activities to their travels. A lot of people even planned to add personal vacation time as part of their business trips in 2022.

The generational shift is another good reason why bleisure remains on the rise. This generational shift involves the increasing number of millennials as well as Gen Zs in the workforce, who often value the importance of work-life balance so much more than the rest of the generations.

Bleisure Strikes the Perfect Blend

Travelers and businesses alike can take advantage of bleisure travel and its numerous benefits. For travelers, it’s the best way to explore new destinations and make business travel less monotonous. This lets them see new sights, experience new cultures, and try new foods. Some business travelers also choose to have a companion with whom they spend several days.

On the other hand, businesses can also benefit from bleisure travel. It helps attract and maintain top talent because it gives employees a chance to enjoy the perks of work-life balance. In addition, it helps cut down on travel expenses since employees might be more willing to spend on leisure activities during trips. For airlines, the bleisure travel trend has also developed a growing avenue for more new sales opportunities.

Bleisure Travel to Continue to be a Growing Trend

Bleisure travel is expected to grow in the days to come, and there’s no surprise there. As people learn to value work-life balance, this travel trend will also become more popular than ever.