Work Meets Wanderlust as Blended Travel Becomes Entrenched Behavior

While many travel trends emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, one has truly had staying power: blended business and leisure travel. The flexibility introduced by a rise in remote working allowed many professionals to work from the road, to integrate some leisure time into business trips, and to be more flexible about when, where and how long they traveled. And now, nearly five years after the initial wave of COVID closed offices and launched a million Zoom meetings, it appears that blended travel is truly entrenched.

Workers, especially Gen Zers, have flexibility to blend business and leisure travel

There has been much discourse in 2024 about a return-to-office mandate for workers, but despite these changes, most employed adults still say they have some level of flexibility in their work schedule. More commonly, this flexibility comes in the form of schedule — 68% of U.S. adults say they have flexible working hours, and just 3 percentage points fewer say they have flexible working days. Slightly fewer, but still a notable number of workers say they can work remotely, with nearly half being able to do so domestically and 33% saying they can work from abroad.

This flexibility is important to the travel industry, as those with the ability to take their job on the road or flex their working schedule are freer to travel as they please, combining business and leisure travel as it suits them. And the generation with the most flexibility in their work are perhaps surprisingly also the most junior: Gen Zers.

Historically, the privileges of flexibility in work have often come along with seniority, with entry-level employees required to put in consistent face time in the office. However, this generation has forged their working style in the context of COVID-19, and they are likely to favor a hybrid setting to any other approach to working.

Blended travelers are shifting towards more business-led trips

Despite the flexibility their careers offer, Gen Zers are not the most likely generation to take a blended trip. That title goes to millennials, who are more likely than all other generations to take each type of blended trip: one that is a leisure trip with some business mixed in, a business trip with added leisure activities, or one that is equally balanced between business and leisure. 

In many ways, Millennials are the perfect fit for blended trips: they appreciate and prioritize travel in their personal life, enjoy a relatively high level of flexibility at work after beginning their careers in an in-person landscape, and tend to make more money than Gen Zers to fund their travels.

That said, the gaps between the share of millennials who took a blended trip in the past year and those who plan to take one in the coming year speak to some potential changes. The most common type of blended trip for millennials and all generations in the last year is a leisure-led one, and each group is less likely to say they will take a trip of this type in the coming year than to say they have done in the past year. But there is movement in the opposite direction for other trip types — each group is more likely to anticipate business-led and equally-balanced trips in the coming year than to say they took trips of this type in the last year.

One possible reason for this is financial: the more a trip is centered around business, the more likely at least some (if not all) costs are likely to be covered by an employer rather than an employee. Among those travelers whose next blended trip will be business-led, 45% say their employer will pay for transportation and 41% say their employer will cover accommodation, compared with 27% and 26% for those who are taking a leisure-centric trip.

Loyalty programs are increasingly important to blended travelers

Leisure and business travel occasions prompt unique consideration sets and preferences for travelers, and travel brands have been trying to navigate a balance of the two as the segments have increasingly blurred. Overall, some priorities have remained consistent for blended travelers since last year, but there have been some notable shifts.

When it comes to booking accommodations, WiFi has been and remains the top priority, as it is essential for workers on the road to get their job done. That said, it’s more important for WiFi to be free than fast, and in fact the share who rank a fast connection declined by 4 points since last year, perhaps reflective of a decline in virtual meetings as many workers return to the office, resulting in less need for video-ready internet. What’s perhaps more notable though, are the priorities that have grown in importance.

Proximity to a location where a traveler’s business is being conducted grew by 5 points, leapfrogging other priorities and further reflecting the movement towards business-leaning blended trips. Blended travelers are also looking for convenience in the way of self-check-in and check-out. But the consideration that grew the most is the ability to earn points or rewards, which increased 8 points since last year. Despite the fact that loyalty program membership remains stagnant, this suggests that blended travelers are a key group for programs to reach and engage.

This movement is apparent when it comes to booking flights as well: the ability to earn points or rewards grew by 6 points, the most of any consideration. A slight uptick in other considerations also reveals a theme of comfort during the journey: free food, free alcoholic beverage options and extra legroom all saw small increases in the share of travelers who ranked them among the top three priorities.

Both accommodation and transportation brands can use this data and monitor it on an ongoing basis as the landscape of blended travel continues to evolve, as understanding the unique needs of this cohort can help to serve them better and facilitate smoother travel experiences.

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