This new trend is a clutch way to save money and yet travel more often.
What brings you here? Business or pleasure? For an increasing number of travelers, the answer is both.
While there was a post-pandemic rush to travel ― dubbed “revenge travel” after seasons spent in lockdown ― that overall trend has recently softened as consumers have cut back on vacations to deal with a rising cost of living. For those still seeking a vacation, blended or “bleisure” travel is the perfect solution.
Bleisure travel ― a portmanteau of “business” and “leisure” ― is when you tack on a couple of days to a work trip so you get to have a little fun and explore the location before heading home. (The trend is like the kosher, work-approved version of “hush trips,” another work-from-home-inspired trend in which employees work remotely from a trip location without notifying their employer.)
Sarah Stone, the editor-in-chief at the travel site Frayed Passport, traveled this way extensively back in her corporate days.
Her favorite bleisure trip was to New Zealand. After a work conference and some meetings in Auckland, her husband joined her and the couple took a weeklong road trip around the North Island, visiting Hawke’s Bay, Napier, Taupo and a few other spots.
“If your company can cover transportation and accommodation, or at least part of it, that’s a massive portion of your trip that you don’t have to worry about,” Stone said.
How’d she swing it? Her employer was covering her airfare, hotel and meals during the conference, but before she booked anything, she asked if she could extend the trip by a week while handling her own expenses for that portion of it.
“I made the case that it would be better to get all of my follow-ups and notes done before taking another 14-hour flight, and it worked out great,” Stone said.
“On the road trip, I checked in a couple times a day and got all of my high-priority messages out and organized,” she said. “I definitely breathed easier knowing that important information wasn’t falling through the cracks due to hectic travel scheduling and jet lag.”
Bleisure travel bookings like Stone’s are up four times year-over-year, according to an October report by corporate travel and expense management platform Navan.
“The most popular time for bleisure travel is during the confluence of conference season and shoulder season, when the weather’s still great, but prices and crowds decline,” said Rich Liu, CEO of Navan Travel, the company’s travel division.
The continued popularity of hybrid and remote work has made it easier than ever to pull off blended travel. So does the fact that companies are starting to see the benefits of allowing employees to mix in some downtime to prevent burnout, Liu said.
Of course, employees have always figured out ways to mix work trips with a little leisure. There’s just now a pithy word for it.
“This has been a trend for a long time,” said Paul Tumpowsky, a Virtuoso adviser and the founder and CEO of New Yonder, a luxury travel advisory.
“Back when airlines priced tickets lower for Saturday night stays, many people would arrive early to Las Vegas or other destinations ‘to keep costs down,’” Tumpowsky said. ”‘Bleisure’ has just become much more prevalent now with work from home and remote work.”
Bleisure is less under-the-table these days, so much so that companies are increasingly establishing clear policies that outline their blended travel expectations, said Cameron Spence, a consulting manager for American Express Global Business Travel.
Typically, you have to get management approval for blended trips, ensuring no additional expenses are incurred by your company and agreeing that travel won’t disrupt business objectives, Spence said.
To avoid potential liability issues, your employer may also emphasize that while on the leisure portion of the trip, you’re responsible for your own travel safety.
“By adopting such policies, organizations can harness the benefits of bleisure travel while maintaining control over costs and operational efficiency — ultimately fostering a more engaged and productive workforce,” Spence said.
So how do you get your employer to sign off on letting you tack on a few days at your own expense instead of rushing back home? Below, travel experts offer their best advice for maximizing your blended travel.
Make an effective case to your manager.
Be open with your manager about your intentions and reasons to extend your business trip so there’s no confusion regarding schedules and obligations, said Suzanne Neufang, the CEO of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).
“Tell your manager that you’ll keep business and pleasure expenses separate, collecting receipts and reports to help avoid any mix-up of company and personal costs,” she said.
You can make the case that blended trips are more sustainable trips — one set of major transportation (not doubling carbon emissions), and also on the human sustainability side, Neufang said.
Stone used to stress to her managers how much of a boon to productivity a little down time would be after a work conference.
“Being able to stay a little longer and decompress a bit after running around and meeting a bunch of inspiring new people with new ideas and insights helps me transition back to my day-to-day much more easily and elegantly than if I were to try getting that immediate work done at the airport or while wrestling with airplane Wi-Fi,” she said.
Get creative about your travel plans for the leisure part of your trip.
If you’re in, say, San Francisco or Hong Kong and have never been, you may want to stay in your work-trip location. Other times, work travel will take you to a destination that can serve as a launching pad for a different city, said Stephanie Hubka, a travel writer who runs the blog Road Unraveled and who also has a corporate job and has bleisure traveled.
“Some flights may be cheaper than from your home airport, which can save money. It may be worthwhile to look at multi-city trips when booking your flights; in some cases, the price may be on par with a round-trip flight to and from your business destination,” she said.
For instance, after a work trip to Beijing, Hubka went on a 10-day vacation to explore Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam ― destinations that were much easier to visit from Beijing than from the U.S. Another time, after finishing a work conference in Paris, she squeezed in a long weekend exploring Brussels and Amsterdam before flying home.
“Those cities are just a few hours from Paris by train, and adding a few days to my trip was relatively inexpensive,” she said. “My employers were very receptive when I shared my plans, and for the most part, extending my trip was treated as any other time-off request.”
Ask if you can book your own flights and hotels with reimbursement.
That way you can accrue travel rewards and points for vacations and fun later, Stone said.
Your company’s travel and expense platform might be able to help you.
If your company uses a travel and expense management platform to book corporate travel, the site may already have a feature to make trip extensions easy and keep them separate from the core business trip.
For instance, Navan has an “Extend Your Stay” feature that helps ensure personal charges don’t get mixed up on the company credit card. The feature also keeps your personal booking details hidden from your company.
“Historically, one of the biggest barriers to entry for bleisure travel has been the inability to accurately track and split costs between employer and employee,” Liu said. “There had to be a clearly defined line for work versus personal expenses and how both are charged. So that’s exactly what we did when we built the ‘Extend Your Stay’ feature.”
Stay organized.
Be sure to keep your business and personal travel receipts separate so you don’t inadvertently submit vacation receipts with your business reimbursement request.
“If you have business and personal expenses on a single receipt, such as a hotel folio, highlight the expenses that are part of your reimbursement request and cross out personal expenses,” Hubka said. “When possible, separate receipts make accounting much easier.
Protect the leisure part of your bleisure trip.
If you’re vacationing for a few days after a conference, don’t spend those days holed up in your hotel room sending emails and joining meetings if you agreed to check in once a day or respond only to urgent requests.
“Your supervisor already knows you’re dependable ― that’s why they’re OK with you doing a bleisure trip,” Stone said.
Hubka co-signed the need for work/play boundaries on the trip.
Although it’s important to fulfill your job responsibilities, know when you expect to disconnect and move into vacation mode. “Protect your time off ― you work hard for it, and you earn it!” she said.
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