Travel trend that blurs the line between business and pleasure – ‘bleisure’, in which travellers add holidays to their trips for work
From adding a brief 24-hour getaway onto a work trip to make the most of your weekend, to an additional week spent on the beach, it seems more of us are taking advantage of corporate travel plans to see the world
You’ve heard of a staycation, but as far as portmanteau words go the newly coined “bleisure” travel is becoming a much-talked-about trend in Asia. A linguistic blend of business and leisure, bleisure refers to a trip that blurs the line between work and a holiday, where a traveller opts to extend their business trip to enjoy some downtime at the end.
For example, if you are in Beijing for a meeting, why not call it a long weekend and visit the Forbidden City or the Great Wall? Eighty-seven per cent of business travellers in Asia-Pacific are planning or considering a bleisure trip in the next six months, according to research published in March by Expedia-owned travel management company Egencia. That is compared to 74 per cent of North American travellers and 68 per cent of European travellers.
Flight Centre recently identified the five most frequented destinations by Hongkongers for business, and gave these tack-on trip suggestions: if you’re in Bangkok for work, why not head 200km south of the capital to the beach resort town of Hua Hin? When in Tokyo, see Mount Fuji; for Singapore, visit Bintan Island in Indonesia; and when in Ho Chi Minh, how about the remote archipelago of Con Dao, a short 60-minute flight away?
“We are seeing a growing desire by travellers to add a leisure component to their business trip to experience new destinations beyond their inboxes,” says Callum Brown, general manager for Flight Centre Asia, based in Hong Kong. “More than ever, travellers are looking to maximise the time available to them and cultivate a balance between work fulfilment and guilt-free personal recreation.”
