“Bleisure” Travel Used To Be A Hopeful Myth. The Pandemic Made It Real.

“Bleisure” is one of the most cringe-worthy words in travel. Journalists have been doing ‘trend pieces’ on business travelers extending their trips and adding leisure days, perhaps with family, and hotels chains started getting excited about selling extra room nights (and offering the ability to combine points stays and paid nights in a single reservation).

Only it never really took over beyond a certain threshold, no matter how much people in the industry talked it up at conferences. Maybe, though, all it took was a pandemic.

During the American Airlines first quarter earnings call on Thursday, Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja shared that they’re showing a doubling of business-leisure combination travel.

  • It used to be 20% – 25% of business trips, according to Raja (this seems quite high to me)
  • But now it’s 50% – 55%

This is especially valuable business, with yields that are “75% – 85% of true business only trips,” booked “through lower cost sale channels” such as direct with American, so the yields are “often best in the system.”

Pressed by analyst Jamie Baker on how American knows this, Raja offered that American uses models “that go and predict whether behavior is business and leisure” and they “survey customers to calibrate the model.”

For instance, to American a traveler that’s alone on an itinerary with no checked bags looks like a business traveler. And they ask customers whether their model matches the purpose of a trip. But “those surveys are starting to change. People are saying they’re flying both for business and leisure.”

Now one person in an itinerary might be “leaving Thursday and coming back Monday and going to Pensacola.” And really, anyone headed to Pensacola deserves the moniker “bleisure.”

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Business-leisure travelers stranded due to their canceled JetBlue or Spirit Airlines flights are “blestranded.”

  2. I wouldn’t do this domestically, but I often extended my international work travel, say, to fly Friday night before a Monday meeting in order to (1) get on local time and recover from jetlag, and (2) to allow an extra day if a late night departure was cancelled and rebooked a day later (I had colleagues miss important meetings on that account). And returning, the last day of work often ends too late to fly back that day. On top of that, I’d happily change my dates a day or two if it means getting a cheaper business class ticket or upgrade. Since laptops and wifi became so common years ago, you can work anywhere. It is not wasted time.

  3. Gary, whatever this new program your using is concerning. Uh, the text is horribly vertically placed. Makes for a dreadful reading experience. Is the problem my phone or you? No updates on my end recently…..

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