The ‘bleisure’ phenomenon remains steady
The mix between work and personal time increasingly impacts more areas of business operations. “Bleisure travel” — extending a business trip for personal purposes — has emerged as a trend in response to increasingly demanding work schedules and because work and life lines have blurred in other ways, in large part because of technology.
The trend has important implications for offsite meeting planners regarding everything from site selection and length of an event, to who to include on the invite list. A 2016 survey and report from CWT Solutions Group, a division of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, provides insights that help professional meeting planners and do-it-yourselfers address the needs of their groups.
Defining bleisure
CWT Solutions Group defines a bleisure trip as one that is at least two nights long and either has a flight arrival on a Saturday or a departure on a Sunday. “Most business meetings take place during the work week, and in general there is little business reason for travelers to arrive two days before meetings start or depart two days after meetings end.”
The reasons behind a bleisure trip are varied and may include discovering a new city, visiting friends or family, looking to relax, or seeking entertainment.
The results
- There were about 7% of bleisure trips to top business destinations in 2015. There was no significant increase in bleisure rate between 2011 and 2015.
- 34% took personal days at the beginning of a business trip; 46% took personal days at the end of a business trip and 20% took personal days at the beginning and end of a trip.
Bleisure demographics
- Gender — Female business travelers take advantage of bleisure opportunities more than males (8.5% rate for women versus 6.8% for men). The male/female split was 70/30, and 20% of both genders took one or more bleisure trips per year.
- Age — People age 20 to 25 are much more likely to take such trips, with a rate near 15%. They are two to three times more likely than the 45-50 age group to add a weekend to their trips.
Top U.S. destinations
Top bleisure cities in the U.S. include Las Vegas, Orlando and Miami. The map excludes cities outside CWT’s top 100 destinations by booked air volume. (For example, Honolulu, with a bleisure rate above 20 percent, is not part of the Top 100.)
Bleisure variation with trip itinerary
Distance matters — The farther the distance between the origin and the destination cities, the higher the likelihood for bleisure. As a rule of thumb, an increase of 600 kilometers (approximately 372 miles) in the distance between cities corresponds to on additional percentage point in the bleisure rate, on average.
While domestic trips account for 5.2% of bleisure travel, 9.7% are international trips. The highest bleisure rate — 18.4% — is measured for international trips for which the origin and the destination cities are in varied geographical areas. For example, London is an attractive destination (23.4%), while London is less appealing to those in Paris (2% of travelers).
The capacity for bleisure
Travelers appear to have fixed capacity for bleisure: when they do it, they take one to two bleisure trips per year almost irrespective of how much they travel.
For those who take one to two trips per year, 15% of trips are bleisure, and for those who take more than 20 trips per year, less than 5% are bleisure.
A link to the CWT Solutions Group report can be found in the Additional Web Resources box at https://salesandmarketing.com.
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