NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The blending of leisure and business travel isn’t new, but as leisure travel continues to show strength and group and business travel continue to recover, the bleisure traveler concept is still evolving.
During the “Bleisure Reimagined: How Work-From-Anywhere Has Blurred the Line Between Business and Leisure” session at the 14th annual Hotel Data Conference, hoteliers shared their observations of the bleisure traveler and how their properties are capturing this demand segment.
Current State of Bleisure Travel
Recalling a conversation with a friend who is a hotel general manager, Anna Marie Presutti, vice president at the Nikko Hotel San Francisco, said the hotel’s owner asked her friend why they didn’t have enough hot grab-and-go breakfasts because the business travelers would want them.
The friend’s response was, “When I see one, I’ll let you know.”
Business travel hasn’t returned yet in San Francisco, and group business has been providing the occupancy, she said. It’s within this segment that leisure has been blending as opposed to the traditional road warrior business traveler.
Bleisure comprises about 70% of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts’ business, making it an important segment for the company, said Carol Lynch, senior vice president of global sales at Wyndham. It’s not just individuals but those bleisure travelers bring their families with them, coming for conferences for a few days but booking two double rooms.
It’s necessary to identify the needs of these travelers and see what has changed based on whether they’re coming in as an individual or they’re staying for the weekend with their families, she said. Wyndham’s hotels have made sure they’re providing proper high-speed internet given the number of devices each guest brings with them and making sure there’s space for people to work.
Working for a Mississippi-based company, Micajah Sturdivant, president at MMI Hotel Group, said he knows it’s rare for his state’s hotels to perform better than the rest of the U.S. The South rode out the pandemic better than most of the rest of the country for several macro reasons, and his company’s portfolio of smaller hotels in those drive-to markets provide people different options for their stay.
MMI Hotel Group only closed one of its hotels, and it was closed for 45 days, he said. The hotel announced on a Wednesday that it would reopen the following Friday, and when it did, it opened at 87% occupancy.
One thing his company has found is that shoulder dates have changed dramatically and gone are the days of the discounted Sundays and Thursdays, Sturdivant said.
“Here’s where we’re going to get a little bit,” he said. “This is where we’re really going to make the money.”
Day-of-the-week booking trends are also changing. Guests want to stay longer, and capitalizing on rates with these clients will be a big piece for hoteliers that will have lasting benefits for the industry, he said.
Rates and Guest Expectations, Experiences
The team at Hotel Nikko decided it wasn’t going to cut back on services, wouldn’t close any of its restaurants and continued to do housekeeping every day, Presutti said. Hotel management also wasn’t afraid to raise rates where appropriate and also charged for early check-in and late check-out.
“As long as you’re providing the service and you’re providing that great experience for a guest, you can charge,” she said. “It’s when you have brought your rates up because the market bears it, but you’re not offering the services ... [where] some of our competitors have gotten into trouble.”
The Hotel Nikko has done everything it can at a five-star level, and the guests are willing to pay for that, she said. The guests who come to the hotel are experience-driven, particularly if they’re a bleisure traveler.
“We’re not afraid to charge, but we’re also committed to providing the services and the experience that people have come to expect,” she said.
Communicating expectations is important, Lynch said. The pre-arrival communication lets guests know more information about their hotel so they have a better idea of what to expect.
Wyndham’s hotels skew mostly upper-midscale and economy, and these hotel guests are used to having breakfast, Lynch said. That’s a given for most of Wyndham’s brands, but it was a challenge during the pandemic, particularly during its peak.
“Now that expectation is back, and they want to have breakfast and they don’t want just a grab-and-go — they really want a breakfast,” she said. “We’ve been able to communicate by brand how the brand standard has changed and has been updated. It helps that front-desk person who has to deal with all those questions.”
Customer expectations are changing and they are rising, Sturdivant said. What hoteliers can share in advance of and during their stays can result in more revenue for hotels through different services and amenities, such as spa treatments or times on the golf course.
“We’ve seen great success with the bleisure traveler who has the flexibility to say, ‘You know what, I’ll go get a facial because I just got a message from the hotel’ while on property,” he said.
There a lot of impromptu opportunities, and that has been helpful on the labor side because it keeps more staff, such as aestheticians and massage therapists, working at the hotel instead of working elsewhere, he said.
During a trip of his own the week before in Biloxi, Mississippi, Sturdivant said he got a message about a boat excursion to watch a commercial shrimping operation. The message came out two days before the trip and it was packed the day of.
It was interesting to see the number of people who committed to this activity when they had no idea it was going to happen just days before, he said.