A bleisure trip is what you get when you blend a business and a leisure trip together — a concept that is no stranger to modern business travelers or travel managers. An example of a bleisure trip would be an employee traveling to San Francisco for a business conference at their company’s expense and then tacking on a couple days for a quick jaunt to Napa Valley.
Bleisure tourism is particularly popular among younger employees, as it fullfils the adventurous and budget-conscious spirit of millennials and Gen Xers.
Bleisure travel benefits the traveler, but sometimes creates downsides for the companies initiating the business portion of the trip. That’s why companies need to be diligent about incorporating bleisure guidelines into their travel policies while being conscious of employee satisfaction.
When tasked with traveling to a new and exciting location for work, especially those which are scenic and/or considered lower-risk, it is common for travelers to add on a few extra days pre or post-business trip. Many travelers want to soak up the sun, explore the destination outside of work meetings and the hotel lobby, and gain a cultural experience beyond what would have been possible by simply attending work-related events. And since their employer is footing part of the bill, it makes sense to take advantage of the opportunity.
While it would be silly for companies to prevent employees from enjoying bleisure trips, they do have to be conscious of the health and safety risks these trips present. Part of managing this risk lies in defining which portion of the trip the employer must care for and manage.
It's wise to incorporate bleisure guidelines into corporate travel policies to set parameters, eliminate confusion, and clearly define what the company is responsible for versus what falls to the traveler. For example, a travel manager may decide that the departure from the last business meeting marks the end of the business portion of a bleisure trip, and the company’s duty of care responsibilities along with it. This concrete guidance would create clarity around the company’s role in risk mitigation and transfers the liability of the leisure part of the trip to the traveler.
Making good policies around bleisure travel is important because you’re deciding not only how your company treats business trips, but also how it treats elements like employee vacation days and itineraries, which greatly impact employee satisfaction and retention.
Allowing your employees the flexibility to extend their stay in a sought-after destination can boost employee morale by allowing them to expand their horizons and tour a place they may have not had an opportunity to explore otherwise. Giving them the freedom to add extra time and even use a couple of vacation days not only allows them to reset mentally, but also helps them cut down on the travel costs associated with round-trip airfare.
Employees can also reduce the number of vacation days that would normally be consumed by travel time on a leisure trip since the trip out would be directly tied to the business portion of the journey. Bleisure trips are a great benefit to offer your workers to increase retention and, let’s face it, we like being able to make our employees happy, too.
How can you identify bleisure trips using your current reporting capabilities?
The easiest way for travel managers to identify bleisure trips today, working with the data set they currently have access to, is to look for discrepancies where the airfare arrival and departure dates do not align with the check-in and check-out dates of the employee’s accommodations. This data analysis can help you open the dialogue with identified travelers to determine the rationale behind the data gaps. It could be that they booked travel outside of your designated Travel Management Company (TMC), and that the data needs to be reconciled, or it could be a result of bleisure whereby the trip was extended for personal reasons. Regardless of the employee’s rationale, both are sound reasons for employee training on the dos and don’ts of business travel as it relates to your corporate travel policy.
Eliminating Data Blind Spots with Traxo
For companies already utilizing Traxo’s services, it’s easy to identify accommodations booked outside of the TMC or approved channels, as Traxo captures all booking data regardless of the original booking source.
For companies still struggling to manage bookings from multiple sources and the dreaded-yet-inevitable “travel leakage,” it’s time to consider deploying Traxo. Traxo gives users complete visibility into travel itineraries — and that includes what employees are doing before, during, and after trips allows you to take the necessary actions to course correct before the expenses are filed.
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