One in five business travellers engage in 'bleisure' every year, according to new research from Carlson Wagonlit. Mixing business with pleasure happens in some 7% of business trips, the research says.
Despite increasing hype about bleisure, these percentages have remained the same over the past five years, CWT Solutions says.
Catalin Ciobanu, senior director, data and analytics at CWT Solutions Group, says, "For corporate travel managers, the key learning is the need to take bleisure options into account for their travel policy, especially for programmes with a high volume of long-haul trips. There are also learnings for suppliers: knowing who is more likely to take bleisure trips will allow them to better anticipate and cater to the needs of business travellers."
The company analysed a database of 29 million business trips a between 2011 and 2015 and defined a bleisure trip as one that had a Saturday at the beginning, end or both.
Our chart this week looks at the gender and demographic split for those taking bleisure trips.
The chart shows that women business travellers are far more likely to take a bleisure trip than their male counterparts.
The belief that younger, Gen Y, travellers are the key demographic for embracing bleisure is also borne out by the chart. However, there is also clear evidence that older business travellers are also keen on the concept.