Bleisure Travelling Post Coronavirus: How to Attract Bleisure Travellers Again? | SPX Lab
From a digital nomad writing a blog post in Palawan, to a manager checking emails from a ski resort in the Alps, to a full-time freelancer staying in a coliving space and a computer scientist building codes from his home office, technological innovations have blurred the boundaries between work and fun, professional career and personal time. In the quest of finding a fulfilling work/life balance, a trend that gained a lot of interest in the last few years is the hybrid model of bleisure.
“The end of labour is to gain leisure” - Aristotle
What exactly is Bleisure?
Bleisure is a buzzword that describes the combination of business and leisure travel that, in recent years, transformed the whole travel industry. According to the Global Business Travel Association, nowadays, more than one in three people that travel for business reasons will also consider dedicating some time for leisure to explore their destination. Expedia confirmed this trend by stating that more than 40% of business trips are extended for leisure purposes. Leisure is related to looking for a better quality of life, which can be translated in free time to relax, doing activities, attending local events and, in general, experiencing more about the travel destination, its culture and surroundings. Having the chance to dedicate some time for interests outside of work, business travellers can boost their morale and reduce stress levels.
In a recent research by Forbes, it turned out that younger generations — specifically Millennials — will most likely take part in such a trip compared to older colleagues, as they seek for adventures alongside their professional career. Companies should also encourage bleisure among their employees for multiple reasons. Firstly, face-to-face communication with clients will reinforce business relationships. Having the chance to explore and experience the local culture, language and art will limit anxiety and help the business traveller to variate the routine and prevent a burnout. Furthermore, it also creates more opportunities both for personal development, and for the professional career. Lastly, companies formalising bleisure policies will gain a positive reputation and attract new talents. This type of tourism may also boost local economies, as bleisure visitors are most likely to have a high purchasing power.
Business and Leisure after Coronavirus
During these unprecedented times, a great transformation is affecting the tourism sector and the travel industry is undergoing changes that may most-likely last forever after COVID-19. Based on a report by Expedia Group Media Solutions, domestic trips turned out to be the most popular version of bleisure across multiple countries such as the United States, UK and Germany. In a previous SPX Lab article - How to Repurpose Hotel Assets into a Shared Living Experience - we have seen that domestic reservations are currently increasing in many countries. 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. Hotels and other short-term accommodation providers can grab this great opportunity and take advantage of it in order to attract bleisure travellers by staying within the borders of their countries. Lastly, we need to mention that travellers will not be able to spend money during a trip as they were before. Thus, travel leisure packages, hospitality tailor-made services, but also alternative residential models (e.g serviced apartments) can accommodate them since they are in need of a place to call home for a flexible amount of time.
Ideas on How to attract Bleisure Travellers
For those who already own a hospitality property (hotels, hostels, B&B), shared living or coliving space, bleisure travellers are a challenging, but rewarding target group. Innovative solutions need to keep being implemented in short-term accommodations, in order to attract travellers and make them happy. One way is to promote bleisure packages: due to the fact that business trips that last two to three nights are very likely to change into bleisure trips (Expedia research), hospitality owners can create special short to mid stay offers for their guests or certain discounts for every extra night. Within these offers they can include leisure activities both inside or outside of the property.
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Originally published at www.spatial-experience.com on June 25, 2020.
