It’s what you’d call mixing business with pleasure. A business trip to a far-off or exotic region? Why not take the opportunity to extend the stay for personal reasons, doing a bit of sightseeing while you’re there. This trend has a name: “bleisure.” Here’s the explanation.
According to a 2022 study by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 89% of workers worldwide want to enjoy free time during their business trips by extending the length of their stay. No surprise there: who would pass up a vacation whose transportation costs are covered by their employer?
The concept certainly isn’t new, but it’s gaining fresh momentum with the expansion of remote work in recent years, which offers the prospect of working while traveling. According to analytics firm Allied Market Research, the bleisure market is expected to grow by nearly 9% a year between 2023 and 2032, eventually topping US $700 billion — driven in part by human resources management and the need to adapt to the expectations of newer generations.
“By creating a work environment that prioritizes work-life balance, employers can save money and maintain a happier, more productive workforce,” the report’s authors write.
This seems to be confirmed by the “State of Travel 2024” study from Skift, the travel-industry news site. 58% of managers surveyed say they actively encourage this practice, recognizing its benefits in terms of employee satisfaction, talent retention, and cost reduction.
In Montreal, for example, one in two business travellers (51%) moved up their arrival or pushed back their departure in 2024, according to figures from Tourisme Montréal, cited in Les Affaires. That amounts to nearly 3 extra nights per traveller — a significant windfall for destinations, especially since these travellers often come with their spouse, a parent, or a friend (44% of cases, according to Tourisme Montréal).
According to American business travel company Navan, Asia-Pacific is the region of the world where the most business travellers embrace bleisure (57%), ahead of Latin America (52%), North America (46%), and Europe (36%). Those figures obviously need to be weighed against travellers’ region of origin.
4 Tips for Clarifying Your Bleisure Policy
The firm nonetheless suggests a few best practices to keep this hybrid approach from turning into vacation in disguise.
- Set clear boundaries between work and leisure
This may seem obvious, but transparency is essential here — especially given the two possible types of bleisure:
1) Extending a stay before or after business meetings. In this case, the employee clearly takes vacation days.
2) “Partial” bleisure. Here, the line is blurrier, with work periods interwoven with leisure time. Example: an employee who goes to a ski resort and enjoys the snow and the slopes in the morning, then works in the afternoon.
- Involve stakeholders from the start
In other words, don’t present the Finance, HR, and Legal teams with a done deal!
- Set clear guidelines for expenses
Here again, this is something to settle before departure: does the company cover the full cost of transportation? What does it cover once on site?
- Clarify eligibility criteria
A matter of internal policy: who can benefit from bleisure, and under what conditions? This is to keep one person’s happiness from creating jealousy or a sense of favouritism across the organization.
Useful tips to keep in mind for your future business trips… and vacations!
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