What is ‘bleisure travel’?

Did millennials invent another word that you have to Google? Not at all. In this article, we’ll tell you all about the term “bleisure travel”. Many people are in quarantine and getting new professions through online courses — they’ll emerge from home completely different people! And soon borders will open again, travel and business trips will resume, and the term will become relevant once more.

Work or leisure?

The word bleisure is formed from two others — business and pleasure, which translates to a combination of work and leisure (bleisure-travel).

And this system has long been familiar to us. Let’s say you fly somewhere for work for a few days. The best option is to include a weekend in your business trip. You can arrive earlier, get used to the place, and start important tasks with renewed energy on Monday. Or, after tough weekday negotiations, you can stay in the city for 1–2 days to relax.

Here’s another option: go on vacation and even there respond to colleagues about work, but only if it’s very urgent. Freelancers who travel and work remotely can also be called bleisure travelers.

The term is not new

It turns out that the term bleisure appeared back in 2009 in a collection of future trends, but it only began to be studied in 2011. And in 2017, the Global Business Travel Association estimated that bleisure travel accounted for 7% of all business trips, which is quite a high figure.

Where it is common

Of course, bleisure is very popular in the USA and Australia among workers in technology (including IT), healthcare, management, and logistics. For these people, every second trip is in bleisure format, as half of all business trips are to other continents. And here, at the very least, rest is necessary after a long flight.

What about employers?

Often, turning a regular business trip into a bleisure format is not the employee’s idea, but the employer’s. And in some companies, this serves as additional motivation for employees. You won’t find this in every company, but if it’s practiced, it means they value their employees. That is, in addition to a regular business trip, the employer also pays for 1–2 extra days for the subordinate to recharge.

How to make it work?

If you negotiate well with your boss, anything can work out, even with minor adjustments. Here’s what you need to do:

• If you are sent on a business trip or to a conference, see if you can include a weekend in this trip (before or after important negotiations).
• If yes, ask your employer if you can arrive earlier or stay a couple of days longer afterwards to relax a bit. If they agree, you’re in luck; if not, there’s nothing you can do.
• Alternatively, you can clarify that you will pay for the additional days yourself (hotel night, food and leisure expenses).
• If you can’t include a weekend, ask your boss if you can work remotely for a couple of days to de-stress and walk around the city in the evening. At your own expense, of course.

And if you are from another field — the caste of freelancers or remote workers, read how to organize your workflow to work productively.