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Research Outline

Prepared for Mike B. | Delivered September 12, 2019

Bleisure Travelers - Business Trips Extended to Leisure Trips

Goals

To obtain information, insights, data and any statistics on business travelers who fly to their destination and then extend their stay and also make it a leisure trip. An ideal statistical response would be: "The number of business travelers who fly and extend their business trips for leisure has increased X% in the past X years. Or X% of business travelers who fly, extend their stay for leisure.

Early Findings

  • Business travelers that extend their business trip to include a leisure trip are called bleisure travelers, and is being used more frequently as a search term on Google. 
  • The international hotel brand, Great Hotels of the World (GHOTW), conducted an exclusive survey that uncovered that "75% of respondents said that it is a common practice to extend their business trips to get some more juice out of their stays. Almost half of them (44%) agreed to this statement and thinks that bleisure trips are getting more common in their organizations. Furthermore, 44% said they do bleisure trips alone."
  • Business travelers are continuing to incorporate an element of leisure into their work trips, a new survey suggests. A 2016 study of 1,650 travelers by Hipmunk found that 81 per cent of Millennials said they would “probably” add extra personal time to a business trip, compared to 56 per cent of Gen-Xers and 46 per cent of baby boomers.
  • A 2018 Egencia study of 9,000 people discovered that 32 per cent of Asian respondents said they had passed up bleisure opportunities because they worried their boss would disapprove, compared to 20 per cent in North America and 15 per cent in Europe.
  • "According to Travel Weekly’s 2016 Consumer Trends report, the percentage of leisure trips that have a business component jumped to 17 percent, up from 11 percent in 2012 and 14 percent in 2015."
  •  Some companies forbid or frown upon their employees extending a business trip into a leisure trip.
  • In this free downloadable report, it states that on average, across five countries, bleisure travelers take more than six business trips per year, and more than 60 percent of business trips during the last year were extended for leisure purposes. In the U.S., bleisure travel conversion is consistent with the multi-national average of 60 percent, revealing a nearly 40 percent increase in American bleisure travel since 2016.
  •  Two-thirds of business travelers value the ability to extend business trips for leisure.
  •  One in six hotel bookings reserved for business trips include a Saturday night stay.
  • Millennials are responsible for 38% of all bleisure travel, making them the most likely demographic group to embrace bleisure.
  • In 2017, professionals in tech, manufacturing, and financial services took 40% of all bleisure trips.
  •  Business trips that last three nights are the most likely to be extended for leisure.
  •  46% of vacation days are taken at the end of a business trip, while 34% are taken at the beginning.
  • Globally, September and October are the most popular months for bleisure, with bleisure travel growing by 15% in September and 18% in October.
  •  43% of millennials have extended their business travel trip for leisure.
  •  Bleisure trips grew 20% from 2016 to 2017.
  • More than 40% of business trips are extended for leisure purposes.
  • In addition to this public search, we scanned our proprietary research database of over 1 million sources and were unable to find any specific research reports that address the stated goals.