Just like the annual release of Pantone's color of the year, each year I keep my eyes and ears open for what the travel industry buzzword or phrase will be, and I think Remington Hotels President Chris Green has already coined them.
(By the way, to save yourself a Google search, my colleague Trevor Simpson reported on Pantone's 2023 color, Viva Magenta. It's a great read.)
Much of the past few years have been dominated by the term "bleisure." If I had to recall, I think nearly every main stage panel, breakout session and networking conversation at this year's industry conferences spoke of the blending of business and leisure trips at least a handful of times.
- From the 2022 Hotel Data Conference 2022: "Hotels Cater Services to 'Bleisure' Travelers Who Bring Family, Will Pay More for Five-Star Service"
- From the 2022 NYU Hospitality Investment Conference: "Hoteliers Adjust Operations To Balance New Travel Behaviors With Leaner Staffs"
Before that, the buzzwords were centered on "authentic experiences," "personalization" and "well-being," to name a few.
A few weeks ago I had a lovely catch-up call with Green, who was elevated from divisional president to president of Remington. You can read the recap of our conversation here.
One piece of the conversation, however, that didn't make it into that article (selfishly, I wanted to save it for this blog) was two terms he jokingly shared with me based on trends he's seeing within the group and individual traveler segments.
These two terms, drum roll please, are "greisure" and "gribt."
Green described greisure as "group business that's coming back strong and extending on both ends [with] leisure stays."
"I'm just tired of bleisure," he laughed. "So I thought I'd come up with something else."
As for gribt, he said Remington is having very strong group bookings heading into 2023, but bookings from individual business travelers is still "running at about 65% of 2019" levels.
"What we're noticing is, that individual business traveler is showing up around the ends of small group [trips]. So company 'ABC' has gone remote, they call their team into Cleveland to a hotel and they have a small meeting," he said, for example. "Well, John, who is a market rep, comes into Cleveland. While he's there for that group meeting, he goes out and he does sales calls. So it's the individual business traveler wrapped in group."
Going back to the stat he shared about bookings from individual business travelers being at 65% of 2019 levels, he said he's not so sure it's just at 65%.
"I believe that with these new ways of traveling, the stays are different," he said, meaning business travelers aren't showing up where they should belong in market segmentation. Typically, they show up under the individual business traveler segment but now they're showing up in group.
"They're booking with their group but staying [an extra] two days with their family or they might be doing sales calls," he added.
I think Green's line of thinking here indicates that bleisure very much will still be a trending word in 2023, but it will likely have different variations to come as we examine how groups and individuals are shifting their travel behaviors.
Though we were joking around a bit, I told him we just might hear these terms up on the main stages at 2023 industry conferences.
So if you do hear them or even use them for yourself, be sure to give a shout out Chris Green. Additionally, you can read a batch of his columns on Hotel News Now here.
What do you think will be 2023's trending phrases? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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