Business+leisure = Booming business for travel, hotel companies

New Delhi: It is business, but mixed with leisure. It is bleisure. And it is booming.

Marketing professional Surabhi Tiwari likes combining her love for travel with her work trips, be it a domestic conference that she recently attended in Hyderabad or an international summit in Japan. She takes about two to three days off exploring nearby places around the destination post her work assignments. Travellers like Tiwari are now key contributors for travel companies and hotel chains that have seen a considerable rise in bleisure bookings this year, with many companies encouraging employees to mix business with leisure.

At Le Meridien hotel in New Delhi, bleisure bookings, which usually comprise business room nights booked for a conference with a few extended days’ stay, have grown by 20-22% this year over the same time last year, according to Meena Bhatia, VP and general manager at the hotel.

For luxury villa rental platform StayVista, bleisure bookings this year are up over 15% from last year. “Additionally, we have seen length of stays doubling as compared to pre-pandemic times. With respect to locations, we have seen a rise in bleisure travel to locations such as Dehradun, Kochi, Pune, Chandigarh and Delhi NCR,” its cofounder Amit Damani said. Many companies are encouraging employees to combine work with personal time. They are also facilitating spouse accompaniment, according to Vishal Suri, managing director of SOTC Travel. He said SOTC has responded by curating flexible, dual-purpose travel experiences and itineraries. Anand Ramanathan, partner and consumer industry leader at Deloitte South Asia, said 29% of corporate travellers now extend their business trips for leisure, with 81% adding one to two days, and 20% adding three to four days.

Further, 40% of travellers extending trips for leisure stay in the same accommodation booked for business, offering hotels a direct opportunity to increase revenues through extended stays or upselling of leisure amenities, he said, citing the report titled ‘Exploring India’s Corporate Travel Market: Understanding Market Dynamics, TMCs, and User Preferences’. Cleartrip launched its meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) and offsite travel division in 2022 and witnessed a 3x growth in the first year, its B2B head Sukesh Shetty said.

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“We are growing steadily, fuelled largely by demand from ecommerce, tech and fast scaling digital firms. Professionals are increasingly blending work obligations with personal downtime, making destinations like Goa, Coorg, Dubai, and Singapore top choices,” Shetty said.”Many new-age firms now allocate team-level budgets for strategy and bonding retreats for domestic destinations such as Puducherry, Kerala, and Nasik. International picks include Vietnam, Baku, and Sri Lanka,” he added.For Accor, which runs hotels in key metros and locations such as Aero City in Delhi, bleisure has improved weekend occupancies in certain markets.

“Guests are moving beyond just the room and breakfast spends. Our dinner covers and beverage sales have moved up, and our weekend occupancies in some markets, which used to see a double-digit drop, have reduced over the past year, which implies that guests are extending stays,” said Vineet Mishra, VP, operations, for India and South Asia at Accor. “A lot of companies are planning conferences towards the latter half of the week, say Thursday or Friday, enabling guests to extend their stays over weekends,” he added. Thomas Cook’s city breaks and bleisure packages offer curated local experiences. “City or business hotels are also offering attractive weekend rates and offers and this makes the bleisure extension even more viable,” said Indiver Rastogi, president and group head for global business travel at Thomas Cook (India).

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