So much is made today of travelers combining business trips with pleasure activities, in a category of travel dubbed “bleisure” or “blended travel”. The hospitality industry was chomping at the bit to find new demand sources coming out of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and bleisure trips seemed the perfect new target for property refreshes or marketing campaigns. Entire brands have pivoted to catering to this new travel category, with companies like Selina and Sonder embracing the blended nature of travel in its offerings and messaging.
All this attention begs the question: is the hype really worth it? Are hospitality brands bending over backwards for travelers that either will never stay or would have always stayed with them? The answer is a little bit more complicated, and worth a deeper exploration.
Bleisure Travel is Big
The sheer size of this new bleisure travel market is enough to at least consider its impact on the hospitality industry. Future Market Insights estimates the value of the bleisure tourism market (which included the hospitality industry), at $497.5 billion in 2022, and this could grow to almost $3 trillion by the end of 2032. To put this in perspective, while the blended travel industry currently represents about 5 percent of the global tourism market, it will grow to represent more than 17 percent by 2032, an annualized growth rate of nearly 20 percent.
Dollars aside, people are expressing the desire to make more out of their business or leisure trips. Travel Pulse reported that 89% of people plan to add personal vacation time to their business trips in 2022, and in 2023, 2 out of every 5 employees are asking their managers if they can use vacation days before or after a work trip, according to the Global Business Travel Association.
One of the issues with even measuring this travel segment is that the category is quite broad. Does vacation time have to be used to count as bleisure travel? What is the exact mix of business and pleasure activities that qualifies for the bleisure travel category? An article from Skift admits that we truly “…don’t know who the blended traveler is, because the spectrum is wide: remote workers, digital nomads, families, people booking workcations, or corporate retreats.” The sentiment is one we share and will expound upon.
Where the Focus Should Be
While the hype surrounding bleisure travel is real, hotels and hospitality brands need to be more realistic about what this travel category actually means for them. To start, not every hotel is equipped to compete for this travel category, whether that’s due to their location, their amenities, or their target market. The fact is that the roadside Courtyard or the small town Holiday Inn Express aren’t competing for the bleisure traveler, nor should they.
Moreover, we’ve seen an explosion in the supply of brands catering to this blended traveler category, and they all promote similar amenities: work stations, full kitchens, fitness equipment, etc. There isn’t any differentiation in the explicit product offering, and in reality, these amenities are quickly becoming expectations of bleisure travelers for all brands.
So what are hotel and hospitality brands to do? Ascension Associates emphasizes simplicity in our recommendations to clients, including the amenities and the messaging around them. If hotels can make small modifications to their rooms, adding desks and comfortable work chairs or swapping a mini-fridge for their larger counterparts, then they can start to appeal to the blended traveler without breaking the bank. The marketing around such offerings shouldn’t make this sound like a game-changing innovation; just like fast and free Wi-Fi was a decade ago, the amenities for bleisure travel are expectations, and should be described as such.
What brands should do is emphasize aspects of their experience that are much harder to replicate: their location and their proximity to activities and other demand generators. These features are unique to every property and represent the perfect backdrop to market to blended travelers. Properties could create customized itineraries for business travelers to do on the weekends, or pick out a few local coffee shops to partner with and make referrals to guests who love to work in such environments.
Location and community are important aspects to guests of all stay types, and finding ways to cater to guests who travel for multiple reasons will be key to creating experiences that bring them back.
Ascension Associates Knows Bleisure
But more importantly, we know what smart, sophisticated hospitality brands need to do to succeed in a competitive landscape. Properties are defined by more than what a single consumer group wants. Ascension Associates can advise on how to build a timeless and thoughtful hospitality brand, one that stands out among the crowd without confining itself through messaging or jargon. Contact us today at clients@ascension-consulting.com or through our online form to see how we can help your hospitality brand ascend today.