Bleisure Travel: The New Way to Balance Work and Life

Business travelers sometimes will extend days in the destination for leisure travel. For instance, an account manager may be sent to Paris for a client meeting and decide to spend more days over the weekend to shop the Champs-Élysées. This is what we call a bleisure travel.
Data from Travel Weekly’s 2016 Consumer Trends report showed, leisure trips that have a business component jumped to 17% in 2016, up 3% in just a year. It is making steady gains since it was given the name “Bleisure” in 2012. The rise of bleisure is allowing business travelers to change what may be an inconvenient trip into a pleasurable stay with a relatively low cost.
Bleisure could motivate employee to work harder, leading to more turnovers. Thus employers are starting to realize that it is a good way to let the staff have work-life balance. Some companies are even paying for their employees to take bleisure days. Nowadays, bleisure perks (including additional airfare, meals, and nights after the business trip) are becoming a part of negotiations during a job interview.
A report from Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) showed that younger travelers are most likely to combine their business trip and leisure travel, with 15 percent of those aged 20 to 25 extending a Saturday night stay at the end of a business trip. These travelers tend to take one or two bleisure trips each year. The longer the flight, the higher the possibility for bleisure.
According to GBTA Foundation, business travelers who have taken at least one leisure trip in the past year are a diverse group. On average, these travelers took seven business trips in the past year and earned $79,000 annually. They usually hold middle management positions (42%), slightly higher postion than junior employees (27%) and senior leadership/C-level positions (31%). Additionally, almost three in five (58%) had children at home and 44 percent traveled with someone else in a bleisure trip. Some of the most popular places for such trips include Las Vegas and Barcelona.
The hotel industry is aware of of this change and is providing more activities and tours for business traveler to make a memory. To follow this trend, hotels from all over the United States have tailored their amenities to cater to bleisure travelers—by serving a wider selection of grab-and-go breakfasts and by offering customized services that focus more attention on the need of business travelers.