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Firms should encourage them
ACCENTURE, advertorial, jeggings. The competition for ugliest portmanteau is
fierce. Few constructions, though, can match bleisure for barbarousness. For
the uninitiated, the word is a blend of business and leisure. But ugly as it
is, it exists for a reason: the practice of adding a few days of pleasure to a
work trip is becoming increasingly popular.
The latest research to bear this out was released this week by the Global
Business Travel Association. Its survey of North American business travellers
found that 37% had extended a work trip to include some leisure within the past
year. This, typically, might mean stetching a break in a city into the weekend,
possibly shipping in the family to join the fun. Often, such travellers will
stay in the same hotel for the duration, making up the extra cost themselves.
Interestingly, the older the travellers the less likely they are to do this.
While 48% of 18-34-year-olds in the GBTA survey said they had taken a bleisure
trip, only 33% of travellers aged 35-54 and 23% of over 55s did. The
researchers could not be sure why the discrepancies occur, but a few reasons
suggest themselves. First, younger worker are probably more likely to still see
business travel as exotic and exciting. So while grizzled road warriors just
want to get a trip over and done with and return to the family,
twenty-somethings are a bit more wide-eyed and want to extend it (and are less
likely to have a family to consider). Second, older travellers tend to have
more money to decide where they want to go on holiday; they do not need to take
advantage of an opportunity for a cheap holiday that work might throw up.
Companies should embrace the idea of "bleisure". At the least it might save
some money. Extending a stay can mean that an expensive Friday morning flight
is substituted for a cheaper weekend one, or a cheaper day-rate on a longer
hotel booking can be negotiated. At its best, it might help keep employees
enthusiasm for a life on the road kindled. If millennials are true to their
type, and value non-monetary benefits such as work-life balance, then
encouraging the practice is a simple way to help retain them.
Still, there is a darker art to bleisure that is not often talked about in
these surveys: working a business trip around a pre-planned leisure one.
Gulliver caught wind of an acquaintance who suddenly had to attend a very
important meeting in a far-flung sunny nation that, as luck would have it,
coincided with a wedding invite. It saved her a bundle on the airfare. Such
serendipity needs its own portmanteau. A flout-of-office?