„The business travel experience itself has changed for the worse in 2020. I hope that the services of the airlines & co. will return and then Bleisure will also be more possible again.” Florian Wieder, Designer of TV stages, tours, shows such as the Eurovision Song Contest and owner of Wieder Design
Florian, you were permanently on the road before Corona. What did the year 2020 look like?
Due to my international business and offices in the USA, Asia and Germany, I had an international flight almost every week until the beginning of the year. When the lockdown came in the spring of 2020, my industry went into a state of shock. My travel went from 100 percent to zero as all meetings switched to video conferencing. As a frequent traveler, this was an extremely unfamiliar situation for me. And surprisingly, I didn’t miss traveling that much, because a bit of the quality of life returned, just at home rather than on the road. In the meantime, I regularly commute between Munich and Los Angeles again, because I have to be there in person for our TV and music productions. However, most meetings still take place as video conferences.
How has travel itself changed?
It’s dramatic to see how much travel has changed for the worse in recent months. The regular 11-hour flights to L.A. were always a welcome respite for me. Now, due to the crisis, the airlines have extremely downgraded their service, and many of the advantages that had made traveling as a Lufthansa HON easier are no longer there. Under the current circumstances, I find traveling more of a burden and unfortunately can’t enjoy it. I hope that the airlines will slowly recover and that the service standard of the last years will return.
What Bleisure opportunities have you used, lived, experienced recently?
I love my job and the contact with people from different countries and cultures, which is unfortunately reduced to a minimum at the moment. It is important to me to be able to move freely. On my last business trip to Vienna, a city I love, my stay was limited to meetings, hotel rooms and pizza service. This, of course, is the opposite of how I want to experience a destination, whether for business or for leisure. So for now, my Bleisure options are rather limited to cooking for myself and sitting on the sun terrace in California. But still: Due to the limited travel and the fact that almost all meetings took place via video, I was able to spend almost the entire summer in Italy and on my boat and had a really good time despite the adverse circumstances.
Sylvie Konzack …
was probably only able to interview Florian Wieder at the moment because he wasn’t traveling by plane quite as often as usual. But the frequent traveler knows how to balance his “remote-work-bleisure-balance” with his residences in Munich, Italy, Los Angeles and his boat in Italy..
Fotos: Florian Wieder
