‘Bleisure’ travel gains popularity as remote work redefines work-life balance | Travel

Remote is hybrid work it affected many industries, from commercial real estate to downtown restaurants. And it has influenced how many workers, without limitation of office attendance requirements, plan their trips. Some call it “bleisure trips”, “laptop lugging”, “workations” or simply “mixed trips”. The essence is the same: remote and hybrid employees are expanding work trips to include leisure or work activities during their leisure trips. Whatever it is called, it could blur the traditional division between leisure and business trip.

The travel accommodation industry is already seeing the impact of the trend. Because the needs of bleisure travelers are different from those of traditional vacationers or business travelers, existing accommodation options – especially hotels – can be lacking. This has created an opportunity and seems to have fueled a boom among short-term vacation rentals like Airbnb. Quarterly demand growth for short-term rentals has outpaced that for hotels since the first quarter of 2022, when travel began to fully recover from the pandemic, according to a 2023 report from AirDNA and STR/CoStar , hospitality industry analytics services. This change reflects the changing preferences of travelers and the ability of short-term rental hosts to react quickly to these changes.

“We’re seeing more and more people looking to convert their homes into short-term rentals,” says Jamie Lane, chief economist at AirDNA. “So the supply could be added in an instant. It takes 10 minutes to create a listing, while the construction of a hotel can take years. Indeed, the year-on-year growth in the supply of short-term rentals has exceeded the 15% in each quarter from the first quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of 2023, compared to a growth of less than 5% for hotels, according to the report.

More short-term rentals are available and more travelers are choosing them. How is a travel factor “bleisure”?

A NEW TYPE OF TRAVEL – AND TRAVEL

Vacations were something that employees squeezed in between long periods of work. It is no longer the paradigm for many office workers with more flexible schedules. Far from being a pandemic-only trend, the popularity of bleisure travel is on the rise. For example, more than a third of workers plan to do some work on holiday season travel this year (up from 26% during the 2022 holiday season), according to a fall 2023 survey from the consulting company Deloitte.

Importantly, remote employees who plan to work during their vacation trips expect to extend their trips by nine days due to increased scheduling flexibility. That is, bleisure travelers take much longer trips than they would have if they had to run to the office. This has profound implications for the housing industry.

“Half of the nights booked are now longer than a week,” says Lane, referring to short-term rental booking data. “And when people are looking to stay longer, there is a higher propensity for them to book a short-term rental.” Many short-term rentals offer discounts for extended stays, which is attractive to bleisure travelers. And provide home conditions that make them more comfortable for longer stays. “They want those amenities — a kitchen, workspace, etc.,” Lane explains.

WE CAN ALWAYS (NOT) GO IN THE CENTER

Combining work and play has changed the services travelers seek, and where they travel. While business travel and business hotels are traditionally centered in dense urban cores, bleisure travelers seem to be looking elsewhere. “Most of the hotel supply is in the big cities and along the interstate,” says Lane. “Most of the short-term rental supply is in the mountains and beaches.”

Indeed, small cities and rural destinations saw the largest increase in supply in the first part of 2023, followed by suburban areas, according to the AirDNA and STR/CoStar report. This led to another change in housing preferences. “We don’t see a recovery in shared rooms or studios, they are still under demand in 2019,” says Lane. “We’re seeing all the growth in demand in larger homes.”

Travelers who combine work and play are looking for larger accommodation outside of major cities where they can stay longer. All these changes favor short-term rentals over traditional hotels. According to Lane, this dynamic is unlikely to change in the near future, as economic headwinds prevent new hotel development, leaving room for the number of owners who list their properties on Airbnb to meet demand and fill supply gaps.

The trend of bleisure travel, and its implications in the industry, could be just beginning. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Sam Kemmis is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: skemmis@nerdwallet.com.

METHODOLOGY

Deloitte’s 2023 Holiday Travel Survey was conducted between September 12 and September 25, 2023. A representative sample of 5,281 Americans took the survey and of those, 2,531 respondents qualified as and holiday travelers with plans to travel between Thanksgiving and mid-January.

This story was published by a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the title has been changed.