More and more digital nomads are changing both work and travel. Hospitality and tourism professionals are trying to adapt.
It’s a very fashionable portmanteau. Trained on business (business) and leisure (leisure), it refers to the art of combining professional travel and leisure activities. No more lightning trips, long stays abroad!
“The bleisure is the future of business travel? ” asks Toby Skinner in the Financial Times. The columnist provides some answers. In 2020, spending on business travel fell by 52% while simultaneously, according to a study by MBO Partners, 10.9 million Americans described themselves as digital nomads – a figure up 49% compared to 2019. For its part, the Upwork platform, specializing in the search for freelance jobs, estimates that the United States will have 36.2 million remote workers here 2025.
Digital nomads: increasingly varied profiles
“When we started, we only had professionals from the technology sector”, testifies Emmanuel Guisset, founder of Outside, a company which since 2015 has offered residences systematically combining coliving and coworking. “Today, we welcome both creatives and consultants as well as employees who come with their families.”
The luxury hotel industry quickly took the measure of the current development. Last March, Marriott announced the opening of seventeen new long-stay residences under the Element Hotels, Residence Inn by Marriott and TownePlace Suites brands. For its part, Hyatt has just launched The Great Relocate, a label that offers reduced rates for stays of at least twenty-nine days in luxury residences with workspaces and meeting rooms.
“Our problem is that we cannot find enough hotels to buy out”, testify Emmanuel Guisset whose company, already well established in the United States, has opened a dozen residences abroad, from Lisbon to Tulum via Santa Teresa, in Costa Rica.
But not everyone can afford to play the techno-gypsies. The vogue of bleisure will it be sustainable? From October 2020, the CityGroup and Credit Suisse banks asked those of their employees who worked from abroad to return to the country, recalls Toby Skinner – in particular for tax reasons.
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Founded in 1888 under the name of London Financial Guide, a four-page journal intended “To honest investors and respectable brokers”, the Financial Times is today the financial and economic daily
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