What is the ‘Bleisure’ Travel Trend?

What is “Bleisure”?

Business-leisure or ‘bleisure’ is the trendy term for describing situations where employees combine business trips and leisure time. Time away from the office for work is converted into a well-deserved holiday. This type of travel is becoming increasingly popular with employers and employees alike.

Bleisure benefits

Bleisure time is increasingly utilised by employers to boost employee morale, reward good performance and decrease employee stress. Employers are also offering bleisure as a perk of the job, attracting top talent with opportunities for international travel (for both work and play)!

Who are the bleisure travellers?

In recent years, more traditional business trips have tended to be completed by personnel in the 45 to 55 age group as displayed by previous surveys. However, new surveys indicate that the largest demographic currently taking advantage of the bleisure travel trend is between 25 to 35 years old.

How frequent is bleisure time?

In 2018 a report compiled by Egencia (a travel management company, known as a TMC) found that 68 percent of business travellers mixed business with pleasure as much as 3 times a year. It seems that once you have been bitten by the blesiure bug its tough to return to traditional business travel!

Bleisure bandwagon

I predict that employers will be increasingly jumping on the ‘bleisure bandwagon’, noting opportunities to make the trip more cost effective for all parties as well as promoting a healthier lifestyle and wellbeing for the travelling employee.

Corporate Housing and Serviced Apartments

Corporate Housing and Serviced Apartment providers have noted the trend and are making allowances for employees who may be joined by their families for the ‘leisure part’ of their blesiure trip; of course both parts of the trip (business and leisure) will have very different requirements.

Covering all aspects

A single business traveller will have vastly different wants and needs to a family joining an employee on holiday. Corporate Housing providers will work with both the employer and employee to find the right accommodation that works well in terms of location, facilities and budget throughout the trip.

Does your company offer bleisure travel?

What is your opinion of the blesiure travel phenomenon? Some people believe that bleisure time is great idea for increasingly employee productivity and talent attraction, whereas others may feel this is merely a fad (and a waste of time and money)! What do you think? Please feel free to comment.

Written by Charlotte Luck – Senior Recruitment Consultant – Corporate Housing Services at Alchemy Global Talent Solutions.