Today’s workaholic culture requires entrepreneurs and business travelers to get creative when it comes to scheduling their leisure time. Business travel remains a prominent aspect of North American corporate culture, and frequent business travelers are increasingly expressing interest in expanding their work trips for pleasure.
As a result, bleisure hotels are on the rise, and our team at Valor Hospitality Partners is poised for the challenge. Read on to learn more about what bleisure travel means, as well as how we’re partnering with bleisure hotels like Home* Suites Hotels to meet the demands of this lucrative market.
Bleisure Travel: Where Business Meets Leisure
If you’ve ever planned in a little ‘me-time’ at the end of a business trip, you can safely say you’ve dabbled in the world of bleisure travel. A seemingly obvious play on words, bleisure tourism is all about the perfect balance of work and play. A business trip, followed by a mini-vacation featuring as many local attractions you can fit into your schedule. Blending the worlds of business and leisure is not a new concept, but as corporate culture evolves, bleisure tourism has taken on new meaning.
How the Bleisure Tourist is Reshaping Business Travel
For frequent business travelers, the idea of extending a work trip for entertainment purposes remains consistently appealing. While millennials are undoubtedly leading the way in reshaping business travel trends, the 2019 State of Business Survey by National Car Rental found that frequent business travelers of all ages are reaping the benefits of bleisure travel. In comparison to business travelers who choose not to mix business with pleasure, bleisure travelers were reported to experience higher satisfaction with their quality of life and their work/life balance.
For most modern business owners, employee satisfaction and retention remain at the core of business strategies for success. Employee travel incentives amongst other “work perks” are common initiatives for attracting and retaining qualified candidates. For most savvy business owners, altering corporate travel policies in support of bleisure-ly activities is a no-brainer. With corporate America on board, bleisure travel is no longer just a trend – it’s a lifestyle.
Re-imagining Business Travel With Bleisure Hotels
For the hospitality industry, the bleisure travel market is one that offers endless opportunities and enormous potential. Recent data also reveals that 50% of young business travelers always or often book their vacations around business trips. The convenience factor plays a role for parents too, who are especially prone scheduling vacations around business travel rather than planning two separate trips.
This creates a huge potential for the hospitality sector to turn short-term business trips into long-term bleisure vacations. The best bleisure destinations should allow guests to transition from work-mode to play-mode with ease.
This is what we’ve accomplished in our partnership with Home* Suite Hotels, a boutique urban accommodation that checks off all the boxes for bleisure travel.
Here are just a few of the most popular bleisure-ly activities Home* Suites has perfected.Trust us when we say, there’s *No place quite like it.
Bleisure Hotel Essentials from Valor Hospitality
Sight-Seeing and Exploration
The best bleisure hotels are close enough to the action for post-work play and sight-seeing, yet blissfully isolated from the hustle and bustle for a good night’s rest.
Home* Suite Hotels locations are perfectly positioned to have anything you need right at hand. Whether you’re out of town for business, pleasure, or a little bit of both, you’re in for the perfect mixture of productivity and play.
Home* Cooking and Unique Culinary Experiences
Local cuisine is a favorite among bleisure tourists, especially for millennials, which make up 90% of the bleisure travel market. Bleisure hotels should allow business travelers to get a taste of the local cuisine, whether it’s at a neighborhood restaurant or inside the hotel itself.
Home* Suite Hotels offers plenty of options to satisfy the tastebuds of blesiure travelers. Expect to find all your favorite dishes with a unique twist and fresh flavor. Home* travel destinations will also offer a coffee shop and 24/7 sweet stash for guests to treat themselves, minus the guilt. For those with a packed business travel schedule, a few extra calories still counts as leisure.
Culture and Art
When traveling for business, the destinations aren’t always five star resorts. This offers bleisure travelers to gain unique experiences that can be sometimes be surprisingly more fulfilling than even the highest quality room service and white, sandy beaches.
Home* Hotels allows bleisure tourists to immerse themselves in the native culture through their in-house collection of contemporary pieces by South Africa’s artistic youth. Bleisure enthusiasts will have their travel creds up in no time at this unique destination.
Poolside Cocktails
This is especially important for bleisure travelers on a tight schedule. When you’re sitting poolside with a cocktail in hand, the transition from business to relaxation is essentially effortless.
When bleisure travelers choose Home* accommodations, they have access to a rooftop bar and splash pool. The perfect place to enjoy a classic cocktail while making new friends and winding down from a long day at work. And did we mention every location is home to it’s own resident hound Oscars Arc rescue dog? What more could a workaholic ask for?
Post-worthy Decor
Since Millennials make up a large portion of the bleisure travel population, it comes as no surprise that social media plays a role in creating a successful bleisure hotel. Classic, neutral colors won’t get a whole lot of posts on Instagram. Bold colors with rooftop pools and beautiful interior design are more likely to make their way onto the bleisure travel newsfeed.
Home* suites are uniquely designed by lauded interior studio Tonic. Every room comes packed with considered finishes, high comfort furnishing and bold, full color personality. These blesiure hotel suites are so visually appealing and full of modern comfort, travelers just might wish they could call them Home*.
Tell Us: Have you ever enjoyed bleisure travel? What was the highlight of your stay?