Analyzing Bleisure Travel Target Market in the Hotel Industry

This research provides a comprehensive analysis on how hotels can effectively profile their target market for bleisure travelers. It underscores three critical steps: understanding the support for bleisure travel, considering key factors involved in such travels, and examining demographic attributes like age, gender, and region of business travelers. These insights are pivotal for hotels aiming to gain competitive advantage through tailored marketing strategies that enhance customer experience while minimizing marketing errors.

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Introduction
Bleisure is a term that was coined in the hotel industry to refer to adding a leisure
component to business trips. This trend has become common, especially among the Millennials.
Bleisure makes employees comfortable, motivated, committed and focused. These factors result
in high productivity and profits for an organization. Despite what research has shown the
benefits of bleisure, there is a section of people who believe that bleisure should not be
encouraged since it is not documented in corporate travel policies. Additional, they argue that it
is expensive and difficult to manage. Nevertheless, research has shown that more companies
have become accustomed to the concept of leisure thus allocating time and resources for it.
However, a gap exists in the literature on bleisure travelers target market. Information is
important since it helps hotels to tailor services to fit customer needs. Therefore, this report
explains the research steps involved in ascertaining the information used to profile target market
for bleisure travelers. This will involve analyzing reasons for support of bleisure, considerations
in bleisure travels and bleisure target market demographics.
Understanding support for bleisure
Since the emergence of bleisure, various businesses have adjusted management to ensure
that they prioritize comfort and morale for employees while on business trips. Meaning, they
must have established that there are benefits for supporting bleisure (Zahra, 2016).
Understanding advantages and support for bleisure will enable hotels to find the basis for
developing bleisure activities (arts/culture, sight-seeing, and dining experience) (Zahra, 2016).
Bleisure instills a positive attitude in employees thus making them more productive. Admittedly,
travel can be an emotional and physical burden on staff (Bridgestreet.com, 2014). Therefore,

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introducing leisure can make them more productive while overseas. Consequently, businesses
experience a better return on investment. Understanding this factor helps hotel management to
create activities that are fun for people on business trips (Truong, 2015). For example, they could
organize for neighboring city visits, introducing serviced apartments and games.
Similarly, businesses support bleisure because it portrays their commitment to employee
morale and satisfaction. 30% of trips are done for business purposes (McLeod, 2017). 83% of
people in business trips admit taking 3 or less extra days to explore the city or relax (McLeod,
2017). Meaning, even before businesses started incorporating bleisure in their travel policies,
employees had ways of ensuring they have leisure during business trips (Luca, 2015). Therefore,
by officially supporting bleisure, businesses show that employees’ comfort is a priority instead of
an afterthought.
Understanding the basis of support for bleisure is a critical step in developing information to be
used in profiling target market for bleisure travel (HJ Crawford, 2015). Apart from helping in
creating bleisure schedules, it ensures that services and experiences are fit to the preferences of
staff on business trips.
Bleisure travels considerations
According to a research conducted by Travel Associates, between 20% and 30%, hotel
bookings can be classified as bleisure travel (Bridgestreet.com, 2014). This calls for the need to
understand factors that influence employees to turn business trips into bleisure trips. Therefore,
this section provides the two main factors: business travel location and cost of extending
business trips which are considered in bleisure travel.

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A report by Bridge Street Global Hospitality showed that the further employees travel for
business, the more likely they will extend the trip. Meaning, business location plays a key role in
bleisure travel (Morschett, 2017). Therefore, it is upon hotel management to profile customers
depending on where they are traveling from. This will help in developing a desirable program
that will ensure that guests do not get bored while on business trips.
Similarly, the cost of extending a business trip determines the likelihood of leisure travel.
According to a report on State of Business conducted by Concur Company in 2016, the average
business trip is three nights (Morschett, 2017). Further, business travel expenses are usually
covered by the business. Meaning, taking extra days to relax and explore, while on a business
trip, is cheaper and convenient for employees (Bridgestreet.com, 2014). Additionally, for those
going to business trips with family members, bleisure is the best option since one member’s fare
ticket is paid for by the business.
Location for business travel and cost determines the likelihood of bleisure travel. This
information is important in profiling the target market for bleisure travel (Cho, 2013). It ensures
that hotels adjust their prices to attract more bleisure travelers and create strategies that ensure
that even those accompanying people on business trips get to have a worthy travel experience.
Bleisure travel target market demographics
Not everyone goes for business trips. Similarly, not every person in business travel
extends days for leisure. This calls for the need to understand bleisure travel target market using
demographic features like age, attitude, gender and region (Wilson, 2014).
Research shows that in every 10 travelers, 6 are away for business purposes. Out of the
six, two travel for 60 or more days. Similarly, people on business travel admit taking three, or

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less, days for vacation (Bridgestreet.com, 2014). This means that bleisure is unavoidable among
people on business trips thus the need to be included in every company’s travel policies.
Although most business traveler age range between 45 and 55 years, Research shows that
business travelers below 35 years prefer bleisure. This group cites love for exploration as the
main reason for loving bleisure (Bridgestreet.com, 2014). Further, 61% of them prefer traveling
with family members or significant other to business trips (Leiss, 2017). Additionally, although
the job market is dominated by men, women prefer bleisure and are more likely to extend for
more days.
Findings
The process of profiling the target market goes through critical stages that assure a hotel
success. From this research, it has been established that understanding the support for bleisure,
factors considered in bleisure travel and target population demographics. These steps are
important in ascertaining information used to profile bleisure target market.
In conclusion, information used to profile target market in the hotel industry is important
because it gives particular hotels competitive advantage, enable expansion of the market,
reducing the cost of marketing mistakes and improving customer experience. However, to
achieve effectiveness, research should be conducted in a systematic order. Therefore, this report
has cited understanding reasons for support for bleisure, considerations in bleisure travel and
target market demographics analysis as the main steps to be followed in ascertaining the
information used to profile target market for bleisure travelers in the hotel industry.

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References
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Hospitality: http://www.bridgestreet.com
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Leiss, C. (2017, 8 20). Bleisure-A new travel category. Retrieved 10 25, 2017, from Tnooz:
http://www.tnooz.com
Luca, N. (2015, october 9). Towards a service-dominant approach to social marketing theory.
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