New trends in corporate travel 2023

 

Bleisure: Combining business travel with leisure will conquer business Travel

 

  • 82% of business travellers want to combine work and leisure and 40% of companies have already received requests to do so.

 

  • Companies need to adapt their travel policies and tools to accommodate this trend.

 

  • Destinux enables bleisure to be aligned with the needs of both companies and employees travelling on business.

 

 

Madrid, 21 March 2023. The days of one-day business trips, in which the travelling employee only gets to know the destination, the airport, the convention centre and the hotel, are numbered. Bleisure (business + leisure), i.e. the combination of business trips that are extended to add activities or days of leisure and relaxation, is gaining momentum. A trend that comes from abroad but is also taking root in Spain. In fact, according to the latest report by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), 82% of European business travellers want to combine work and leisure and 40% of companies have already received requests in this regard.

 

Carlos Martínez, CEO of Consultia Business Travel, a company specialising in the comprehensive management of business travel, confirms and identifies this trend as one of those that will decide the future of business travel: “Nowadays, trips are planned with greater intentionality: to cover several objectives and not just one. As a result, and as confirmed by GBTA data, one-day and overnight trips are decreasing dramatically, with an increase in multi-day and multi-night trips to cover a range of objectives, including leisure. This is the case, for example, with conferences, which are usually organised in places where tourism and leisure activities can be practised,” he explains.

 

Travellers take control

 

Bleisure is part of the new trends in post-pandemic business travel. Travellers have now taken control of their travel decisions and do not want to be tied down or rigid, they demand a better travel experience and want personalised policies in which technology is a determining factor. It responds to a more flexible, more digital working environment marked by new relationships of trust between workers and companies. For companies, the fact that a traveller can organise their trip in such a way that they can extend it (by taking the weekend, for example) and take advantage of it to go sightseeing or share a stay with their partner or family is a way of adding value to their team, and that employees can combine work with leisure or family; which ultimately helps to reconcile work and family life and helps them to be more motivated.

 

The combination of business+leisure is a good tool to reinforce corporate strategy and improve the satisfaction of employees who travel for business purposes, aspects that ultimately result in business productivity, but at the same time will require corporations to modify their travel policies to include this modality. Carlos Martínez believes that “companies need to start regulating bleisure in order to provide an adequate response to this demand. Merging leisure and business requires a change of mentality, offering personalised treatment compatible with maximum connectivity and new technologies.  Tools such as Destinux make it possible to regulate these criteria, so that the traveller can book either in the name of the company (work bookings) or in their own name (leisure bookings), actions that imply different criteria, different billing rules, a different form of payment, but all of this is possible with Destinux,” concludes Martínez.

 

Investing in travel software

 

To adapt to this new scenario and harmonise bleisure with the needs of organisations, it is necessary to invest in travel software. The digitalisation and professionalisation of business travel allows companies to adapt the system to their specific characteristics and needs and also to those of the corporate traveller.

 

In order to meet this need, Consultia Business Travel has developed Destinux, the digital and automated solution for the comprehensive management of business trips. A tool that gives travellers autonomy so that they can organise their own travel programme; including their stay, different train or plane journeys, their transfers, and reach agreements with the different people in their organisation who are going to travel together. The system offers autonomy to search and book hotels and tickets, to know all the available alternatives, to create budgets, to retrieve them and to have all the documentation organised in your own travel agenda. Destinux provides users with the necessary tools to plan their travel and stay in such a way as to optimise time, reduce costs and minimise environmental impact. It also offers the Personal Travel Assistant service, with which the traveller has an assigned person at their disposal who is responsible for resolving any possible unforeseen events that may arise during the trip.

 

 

 

About Consultia Business Travel

Consultia Business Travel® is a Spanish company specialising in the integrated management of business travel (Travel Management Company). Thanks to Destinux®, its differentiated solution based on cloud-based software with a personalised advisory service (Personal Travel Assistant), it offers a comprehensive solution for the management of business travel. In addition to managing the needs of meetings, incentives, congresses and events (MICE) that the company needs.

The Spanish-owned company, founded in 2010, currently has offices in Spain and Portugal. The Growth Stage startup has integrated in its powerful management system nearly 3 million hotels, more than 600 airlines, 27 car rental companies around the world and private transfers in more than 160 countries, RENFE, Iryo and taxis and VTC in more than 90 states, achieving online connectivity and efficiency that stand out in the business travel market.