Bleisure travel
Bleisure travel (UK /ˈbleʒ.əʳ/ US /ˈbliː.ʒɚ/) is a portmanteau of "business" and "leisure", and, it refers to a trend of business people to add on some sightseeing to a trip The term bleisure was first published in 2009 by the Future Laboratory as part of their biannual Trend Briefing written by writer Jacob Strand, then a future forecaster working for The Future Laboratory, and journalist and futurologist Miriam Rayman. In corporate business travel, extending a business trip for personal purposes is also known as "bizcation" This phenomenon has been studied since 2011, and from this year on, a  report shows that bleisure travel has been maintaining a constant growth, accounting for 7% of all business trips. Bleisure traveller profiles. Bleisure travellers can be described as "individuals who combine leisure with professional business obligations when abroad". The elements characterising bleisure travellers are different, and this makes it difficult to draw a defined profile of these individuals. Bleisure is a widespread practice among US travellers, especially for those working in the technology, healthcare, and public administration sectors. A report shows that US traveller adds bleisure in about half of the cases, 52% for International trips and 42% for domestic ones . The main reasons for travelling are conferences and conventions, team building, client meetings and presentations. Bleisure travellers could be grouped according to various aspects, in particular gender, age, and trip frequency. Research indicates that females would be more likely than males to take bleisure trips. In both groups 20% of travellers would take one or more bleisure trips in a year, however women register higher rate: 8.5% against 6.8% of men. Younger travellers (between 20 and 25) look significantly more likely to add weekends to their business trips, measuring a rate close to 15%. This result is two or three  times higher than those for 45–50 age interval. Millennial travellers deserve a special attention because they appear to be the individuals shaping the future of business travel, nearly twice likely to travel for business than Baby boomers. Millennials may work from home often or during the evening hours, and dedicate traditional working hours to leisure activities. In comparison to other age groups, Millennials are more likely to take bleisure trips. However, it is not clear whether this reflects unique preferences or transitory life events. Frequent travellers taking 20 trips or more per year seem to be less than 5% likely  to take a bleisure trip during the year, they would account for 8% of all bleisure trips. By contrast, one third of all bleisure trips would be taken by employees travelling once a month. Factors influencing the phenomenon. It seems evident that Millennials workers are increasingly demanding bleisure from their work trip. Despite the state-of-the-art technology available nowadays, Millennials still prefer face-to-face meetings to get business done, therefore travel is still important for business companies. Worldwide, more than one in three business travellers will add a leisure component to at least one of their business  trips this year (2021), said Jeanne Liu of the Global Business Travel Association. Bleisure travel looks as a good opportunity to save on travel expenses, mostly for those who do not take a lot of vacation: 66% of US business traveller spend more money on leisure activities because of the money they save on travel. 60% take bleisure trips because do not have a lot of regular vacations. To decide whether to turn a business travel into bleisure or not, the employee takes into consideration travelling to exciting destinations, additional costs required to extend the trip, how close the trip  is to the weekend, the number of nights they must stay for business, how affordable the hotel is, whether they have friends or family in the area, whether they can bring friends or family along. The general trend would indicate the addition of one or two days as the most frequent option, only 23% of bleisure travellers would extend their trips for more than three days. In many cases leisure days equal (37%) or even exceed business days (42%). The length of the business trip seems to be a crucial factor when considering extending the trip in 62% of cases . In particular, when business days are more than three, bleisure travellers are not only likely to extend the trip, but also to visit different cities in the area. Bleisure in a Post Pandemic World. A 2018 Expedia study found that more than 60% of business trips were extended for leisure purposes. But the concept of "any" travel largely ground to a halt in 2020 due to the pandemic, uncertainty of how the virus spreads and stay-at-home orders in the US and beyond. The domestic pattern seems to be the one that will reach major growth in bleisure in  the post-corona world. In addition, the new working conditions proved that most employees can effectively work remotely at any time. This contributed to raising the employee-employer trust relation and will allow an increase in bleisure travelling. To enhance the traditional business travel experience, hotels are incorporating a wide range of technologies, in-app features, Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, and more. Shoring up holes across a company's technical infrastructure could open up new opportunities for guest engagement and service offerings. Advantages for employee and companies. For the employees: For the companies: Main activities and destinations. The more  likely bleisure destinations are cities offering a combination of different elements, which could allow the travellers to add leisure time to their business trip, such as sightseeing locations, sport venues and cultural events. The difference between the origin and the destination city seems to affect bleisure rates: in the case of domestic trips, the amount of bleisure is expected to be low because the two cities should be easily accessible and share similar culture. On the other hand, long intercontinental trips would offer the chance to know realities that are different from ordinary. Researches seem to confirm this trend: bleisure  trips would account for 5.2% of the domestic trips and 9.7% of the international ones. The highest bleisure rate (18.4%) appears in international trips when the origin and destination cities are located in different geographical regions. The top bleisure cities in US are: Honolulu (above 20%), Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas (12–15%) New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Fort Lauderdale (9–12%). In Europe rates looks lower, this could be due to the shorter domestic and continental routes: Lisbon, Barcelona, Nice, Istanbul (8–11%), London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Rome, Geneva, Paris, Madrid (6–8%). Corporate policy. Given that bleisure travel  is a rising phenomenon, there is still no official regulation, therefore extending business trips for bleisure would have to be decided by management on a case-by-case basis. Some preventive measures could be followed in advance to avoid misunderstanding.