“Bleisure is the biggest trend in business travel, especially for Millennials.” Sylvie Konzack
This is shown by the second annual survey by National Car Rental 2019, which examined the behavior, emotions and perceptions of business travellers in the USA. Among the business travellers who have travelled for Bleisure in recent years, Millennials in particular use this form of travel, followed by Generation X with 81 percent and the baby boomers with 80 percent.
For almost half of all Millennial Bleisure travelers (49 percent), savings in vacation costs are a major reason to turn business travel into personal vacation travel, while 34 percent are counted as non-Millennials.
The destination is the biggest decider whether Business Travellers opt for the Bleisure trip (31 percent). This is followed by their current workload (25 percent) and available financial resources (11 percent).
Bottom line: Bleisure travellers report significantly higher satisfaction with their quality of life than non-bleisure travellers (93 percent vs. 75 percent) as well as with their work-life balance (87 percent vs. 64 percent) (see graph on the left).
Nevertheless, 46 percent of travellers tend not to tell their superiors that they have taken time for leisure and personal activities after their business trip. At the same time, acceptance in companies is steadily increasing: 76 percent of supervisors who undertake their own leisure travel already state that they encourage their team and employees to take their time on business trips. At the same time, 77 per cent of those who travel on Bleisure say that their boss encourages them to do so, compared to 32 per cent of those who do not. With the increasing number of millennials in leadership positions, this trend could increase further
Staying with experience
A study by Great Hotels of the World (GHOTW), an association of 60 hotels worldwide, also confirms the potential of lead holidays (see chart on the right). Three-quarters of respondents said they would like to extend their stay privately. Almost half (44 per cent) believe that the increasing flexibility and mixing of work and leisure will soon make lead leisure even more in demand.
56 percent of Bleisure travellers spend their connecting holidays with family or friends, 41 percent travel with one person. At the same time, 72 percent stated that they wanted to stay in the same hotel or accommodation for the leisure trip after their business trip.
These results are also in line with the trend that today’s travelers want to gain valuable life experiences on their tours. According to a booking survey of 21,500 travelers from 29 countries and the analysis of 163 million guest ratings, almost half of Germans (49 percent) would like this.
Agents like Airbnb also continue to focus on the business travel segment and are currently integrating their experience platform into their own business travel platform. “Selection is a good thing for all individualists,” says David Holyoke, Global Head of Airbnb for Work, and also encourages providers not to put their guest clientele too much into different drawers: “You can be a family traveller, a business traveler, you can be a single traveller or travel with friends. Too often travel providers try to segment this and don’t understand that it’s a person they have to pick up in different situations. As personalization progresses, this will increase.”
Travel as a benefit, not as “trouble” with “headaches” – this is how many travelers today want business travel to be understood. New opportunities for providers, and undreamt-of prospects for companies and their employees
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Sylvie Konzack …
is curious to see what bleisure dynamics the increasing number of millennials will bring to management positions. It is only when companies actively offer bleisure options that the new opportunities for employees, companies and the entire travel chain will become apparent.
Fotos/Grafiken: © iStock/gruizza, National Car Rental Studie 2019, Great Hotels of the World (GHOTW)
