Shaping the Future of Luxury Travel | Future Traveller Tribes 2030 25 ‘Bluxury’: where business blends with luxury


Unlike Bleisure travellers (those combining business travel with leisure travel), Bluxury travellers (combining business travel with luxury leisure travel) in senior positions will likely have greater autonomy over their decision to extend their travel for some leisure time. Nonetheless, they may still be somewhat restricted until companies begin to build Bleisure or Bluxury practices into their corporate travel policies. It isn’t happening widely yet, but is something the industry will need to address in the future.


“Companies need to implement processes and procedures to ensure travellers adding leisure days to a business trip are transparent and have the adequate insurances in place,” says Jo Lloyd, partner at business travel consultancy firm Nina & Pinta. “Whether a company permits Bluxury travel is not really the issue, it is more to do with risk, responsibility and insurance.”


Luxury travel brands can benefit by accommodating travellers’ increasingly blurred lifestyles. Understanding the Bluxury mindset is key. In some cases, these travellers will have the option to fly home on a Friday night at the end of a work trip, but will instead take the opportunity to spend another 24 or 48 hours in a destination and fly back over the weekend instead for the same or similar price. They may come to a travel provider hoping for advice for 24-hour guides to a city, or to get them last-minute tickets to a concert or sports event they have found out about since they made the decision to extend their trip.


These travellers have travelled to fulfil a business obligation, worked hard, and are now seeking a reward and some well-deserved downtime. Their expectations transfer from needing to get their job done as easily as possible to wanting to indulge in a destination now that the work is over.


“If we have guests staying for a week – professionals coming out of London – for the first few days, I can feel that they’re not relaxed yet,” says Joachim Hartl, General Manager of the Conrad Algarve. “I deliberately say to them ‘let us pamper you’. By the fourth or fifth day, they’re seeking other experiences – their expectations are changing.”


Although they will seek assistance from a trusted brand or party to make their decisions more easily, a “Bluxury package” is unlikely to entice Bluxury travellers – they won’t want to feel that they are following the herd. Brands that serve a business travel demographic will need to identify and fulfil travellers’ personal leisure needs and create a bespoke itinerary that can be adapted to how they are feeling at the end of a business trip if they are to convert them into Bluxury customers.


20% 60%


of travellers have not taken bleisure trips, but would like to


have taken bleisure trips, with most (30%) of respondents adding two days of holidays on to business trips


Taken from Bridgestreet Global Hospitality’s ‘The Bleisure Report 2014’


The three most popular Bleisure activities are: 1. Sightseeing 2. Dining


3. Arts/Culture


“Business is done between people not companies. Our events are about building trust and long-lasting business relationships by bonding over memorable experiences. For example, at a Connections Luxury event in Sicily, delegates networked while having hand and neck massages, doing wine tastings or playing golf at Rocco Forte’s stunning Verdura Resort. It was business meeting luxury in the best way possible” Micaela Giacobbe,


Director of Commercial Events, Connections


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