Bleisure is not a word to be found in any dictionary yet, but despite this it is a hot trend in tourism. It can be defined as a combination of business and leisure travel. Whereas tourism statisticians prefer to put visitors in neat boxes, the growing numbers of bleisure travelers are bound to confound the number-counters by blurring the boundaries between market segments.

The following are some of the likely reasons for the popularity of bleisure trips:

Time poverty
A concept liked by millennials
Someone else is paying for the trip (or most of it)
People may not return to the same destinations
Family can be brought along
See more of the world and gain greater knowledge
Have more and different cultural experiences
Two research studies have been completed on bleisure travel and are listed in the sources. The research by BridgeStreet Global Hospitality (2014) found that 60 percent of respondents had taken bleisure trips and another 20 percent intended to. The remaining 20 percent cited a lack of time to fit in bleisure travel. Some 46 percent add pleasure travel days on every or most trips. The major reason for having bleisure trips is to get cultural experiences and new knowledge. More than half (54 percent) of bleisure trips are taken with family members or significant others.

The Carlson Wagonlit Travel study (CWT Solutions Group, 2016) discovered that 46 percent of pleasure travel days are taken at the end of business trips, 34 percent at the trip starts and 20 percent during business trips. It also finds that younger and female business travelers are more likely to engage in bleisure travel. Frequent business travelers are less likely. The propensity to take bleisure trips increased with the distance traveled.

The bleisure idea seems to fit well with the trend for people to want authentic experiences of the cities and other places they visit, even when on business trips. These trips also seem quite compatible with using sharing economy providers such as Airbnb, Uber, and VizEat that allow closer connections with local people and communities.

Bleisure may be more of a new name for a concept rather than a new development in travel. In fact, it has been happening for several decades.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

How do you feel the bleisure trend will affect travel flows in your country(My country is China)?
How should destinations take fullest advantage of the tendency to take bleisure trips?
The research indicates that millennial and other younger travelers are more likely to engage in bleisure travel. Who do you think that is so?
Should companies encourage their employees to take bleisure trips? Why or why not?