Travelling has always been about living beyond the confines of your life, exploring the extremes, and learning from the journey. Whether you are on a leisure trip or a corporate trip, you must always seek to live, discover, and learn on the journey.
Earlier business trips used to be all about flying in, going to a meeting, and flying out again. You don’t have time to explore the locals, discover the heritage and culture, or enjoy the indigenous food and music of the foreign city. However, new-age business travel bears little similitude to this old fashioned system of corporate traveling and is more parallel to its leisure counterpart than ever before. Business travel has evolved a lot to incorporate new trends and customs to extend the experience of business travelers. And there’s nothing wrong with adding that leisure element in your otherwise exhausting business trip without influencing your work. So, we have created a step by step guide to convert your inconvenient corporate trip into a pleasurable stay or what millennials say as “Bleisure Trip”-
7 Quick Travel Guide for Corporate Leisure Travel
- DISCUSS WITH SENIORS
If you want to transform your corporate trip into a bleisure trip, talk to your boss first. You might be surprised to learn that s/he is a lot more adjusting than you’d expect. Bleisure travel is not something new in the industry and most employers have at least heard of the concept. If you have leisure time available, most superiors are happy to let you add a pair of days to your itinerary for exploring the local heritage or visiting the famous sightings.
- BOOKING FLIGHTS
Mondays and Fridays are the best options to schedule your business meetings. This is how you can enjoy a weekend getaway from the excruciating work schedule. To get more time to stay in the foreign city, try to book the first-morning flight on the way there and the red-eye for the return trip back. This will give you some extra hours to discover the destination city and also the fare of the non-peak hour flights is cheaper than the flight taking off at peak hours.
- HOTELS
The hotel plays a very significant role in shaping your experience on the trip. If you are allowed to bring your family on the business trip, you can go for spacious and comfy apartments like the ones provided by Airbnb, where you can stay at ease and have access to a fully-functional kitchen and indoor laundry. Otherwise, even if you are traveling with your colleagues, you can go for corporate apartments as they are designed to make you feel at home and enjoy your downtime with teammates. Double-check your reservations of hotel and flights to make sure that nothing has been overlooked and do keep confirmation details
- EXPERT HELP
For planning your whole bleisure trip, you can always take the help from EMPFLY (PUT YOUR WEBSITE URL HERE) who are professionals and experts in organizing business trips and have 100+ satisfied customers worldwide. An itinerary will be delivered at your doorstep while you spend all grey matter in churning the inputs for your next presentation. They will make the most customized travel plan so that after that hectic meeting schedule you can soak yourself in the leisure fun.
Once an employee discovers the city by himself, he can assist the travel planners of his company by providing them first-hand information. It means that when the company wants to plan another trip to the same destination city, the planners have access to the raw information in the form of expense reports and employee feedback.
- PREPARATION AND COMPLIANCE
We understand that packing and preparing for the trip is the most dreadful part, but an indispensable one. You have to go through it and make sure that everything important for the trip has been packed. We advise you to pack a piece of clothing that you can mix and match and it serves the purpose of both formal and informal. Try to pack versatile, lightweight, reversible clothing in your luggage.
Before taking off, don’t forget to go through the company’s travel policy and try to comply with it during the trip. If your company does not provide travel insurance, try purchasing one for risk management.
- LEISURE TIME- get away from the beaten track
So finally the time has come to fully enjoy the leisure part of your extended business trip. But how?? …Don’t fret. We will guide you on how to wisely exploit your Bleisure trip-
First of all, as you would be running out of the time, you need to prioritize according to your interests as what you want to do and plan ahead in time. You can also enquire about what offerings the hotel may have for corporate guests like you.
- Explore the local sightings and get a selfie at the famous landmark of the city.
- Try the different cuisines and treat your mouth with street food. Explore the dishes that are indigenous to the place.
- Or if you are in a hill station, you can go hiking or do ice skating if the weather permits.
- Make memories at barbecue dinner with your family or colleagues in close gatherings.
- If the city you have landed on surrounds a seashore, then don’t forget to visit the beach and chill. You can also enjoy water sports. Scuba diving, surfing, or book your ticket for that cruise party you always wanted to go to.
ADVANTAGES OF CORPORATE LEISURE TRIP TO EMPLOYEES
These bleisure trips can be very beneficial for your work as well as personal life. Some of them are –
- According to a survey, a greater percentage of bleisure travelers -(87%) report a good work/life balance than non-bleisure travelers – (64%). We can infer that bleisure trips help in creating work-life balance.
- Vacation on the go- Employees can enjoy the vacation while on a corporate trip.
- Bleisure travel leads to the personal growth of the employees
When you get back home, don’t forget to drop a thank-you email to your company for the enriching experience you had on the trip. And suggest bliesure travel to your friends who might be draining themselves in excruciating business trips.
CONCLUSION
These are some of the recreational activities that you can enjoy on your bleisure trip and there’s much more that you can add to this list. You can always invite up your clients or colleagues to accompany you if your family is not around. Don’t forget to follow these guidelines on your next bleisure trip. Happy journey!!