Business is Returning to Normal

Dragonfly Strategists continues its review of the HDC Conference, and the data presented. HDC focused on several areas, including leisure vs business travel, spending, and further recovery.

Today’s topic:

Business is returning to normal…but the transformation in business travel continues.

• Businesses are resuming “normal” level of travel, following roughly at 85 percent of 2019 levels. However, factors such as hybrid and remote work plus changing business styles may continue to shift business travel toward more “Bleisure” travel on a permanent basis. Daryl Cronk, in his business travel breakdown at the conference, said that 80 percent of US companies are allowing some or most domestic travel.

• Conversation on the increase in “Bleisure” (where people are opting for extended leisure stays after/during a business trip), along with data shared at the conference notes that higher-end markets and independents were showing more recovery strength than other areas. Bleisure, which began as a segmentation around 2007, is now “really” relevant, said Alise Deeb, Chief Revenue Officer for Dragonfly Strategists.

• “The length of stay has expanded,” Deeb said. “Sundays are no longer as bleak as they used to be, and neither are Thursdays. For some, why go somewhere for four days when you can go somewhere for four months. (Basically) we can all be gypsies, wandering from city to city to experience whatever we want to experience.”

·       BCD Travel concurs:

Source: “Bleisure Reimagined”, Terence Baker, moderator; Micajah Studdivant, Carol Lynch, and Juan Miguel Rivera-Pecunia, speakers, HDC Conference 2022