Bleisure travel—the blend of business and leisure travel—has become increasingly popular as professionals seek to maximize their time away from the office.
While this trend offers flexibility and the promise of recharging during work trips, unmanaged travel practices can create significant hidden costs for your business:
In this post, we uncover the often-overlooked costs of unmanaged bleisure travel and provide you with actionable strategies for corporate bleisure travel management to streamline policies, enhance compliance, and leverage data for smarter decision making.
Here are the key points to understand about unmanaged bleisure travel costs:
Bleisure travel is no longer a niche trend—it's becoming an expected perk for business travelers. According to Allied Market Research, the bleisure market was valued at $315.3 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $731.4 billion by 2032.
As work-life balance becomes a greater priority, your employees are increasingly extending business trips to enjoy leisure activities, often self-booking their arrangements without corporate oversight.
While allowing employees to book independently may seem convenient, unmanaged bleisure travel creates multiple challenges for your company.
Structured bleisure programs ensure cost control, compliance, and traveler support, whereas unmanaged travel leads to inconsistent policy application, missed expense tracking opportunities, and increased liability risks.
A structured business-leisure travel policy benefits both companies and employees:
Without a formalized policy, you risk financial inefficiencies, unnecessary administrative work, and potential security concerns when employees travel independently.
When your employees book travel independently, they bypass corporate agreements and volume discounts that make business travel more affordable. Without unified booking, you lose the opportunity to negotiate bulk rates, resulting in higher costs per trip.
Fragmented, manual booking processes reduce productivity and increase inefficiencies. Employees often spend excessive time—an average of 12 hours, according to one survey—comparing prices on various platforms. This time could be better spent on core responsibilities, and delays in booking can even lead to missed meetings or suboptimal travel arrangements.
Unmanaged travel creates a scattering of invoices and receipts, forcing your finance team to handle fragmented data. This lack of consolidation creates extra manual work and makes it difficult for you to analyze travel spend effectively.
Without a centralized travel policy, duty-of-care obligations become harder to enforce. Non-compliance with travel regulations and inadequate support for travelers in high-risk areas can result in legal complications and increased safety risks for your business.
A critical yet often overlooked element is the financial strain on your team members. When your employees pay for travel expenses out of pocket—whether for flights, hotels, or other services—they face significant cash-flow challenges while waiting for reimbursements. Delayed reimbursements due to inefficient expense reporting can lead to personal financial hardship and lower morale within your organization.
Unmanaged travel results in siloed and fragmented travel data, making it difficult for you to gain a clear picture of your overall travel spend and employee preferences. Without centralized data, your strategic decisions—such as renegotiating supplier contracts or adjusting travel policies—are based on incomplete information. In contrast, managed travel via a TMC consolidates all your travel data, enabling you to analyze trends, identify savings opportunities, and make informed strategic decisions for future travel programs.
Employee feedback underscores the challenges of unmanaged travel. According to a joint survey from Uber for Business and the Global Business Travel Association:
"Business and leisure, better together: Ninety percent of respondents say employees are more (30%) or equally (60%) as interested in bleisure travel compared with pre-pandemic times. Although 36% say their company's travel policy expressly allows bleisure trips, 49% say their policy does not, but employees are often allowed to take these trips in practice."
These findings illustrate that while your employees highly value the opportunity to extend their trips for leisure, unmanaged travel practices not only expose them to financial risks, but result in inconsistent travel experiences that add stress and reduce overall productivity.
By implementing a managed bleisure travel program, you can achieve:
A well-structured bleisure policy helps you:
Your team members benefit from:
Ready to take control of your bleisure travel program? Here are four actionable steps you can take today:
A well-defined corporate travel policy sets expectations for both the company and the employee. When drafting your bleisure policy, consider:
A formalized bleisure policy ensures cost control, compliance, and risk management, reducing administrative burdens for finance teams.
A unified corporate travel management platform enables businesses to:
A TMC-integrated system makes it easier for companies to enforce policies, monitor travel trends, and reduce costs while enhancing the employee experience.
Even the most structured travel policy fails without proper communication. To ensure adoption, businesses must:
Education and corporate travel training programs ensure that employees feel confident navigating business-leisure travel guidelines, leading to better compliance and cost efficiency.
Bleisure travel policies should be continuously refined based on employee feedback and business travel trends. Companies should:
Ongoing travel program optimization ensures that companies maximize cost savings, enforce compliance, and create a more seamless travel experience for employees.
Unmanaged bleisure travel leads to wasted money, lost productivity, and compliance risks. A structured approach to corporate travel expense management helps ensure businesses reduce costs, improve oversight, and enhance employee satisfaction.
Explore our comprehensive platform for managed bleisure travel that streamlines bookings, automates expense tracking, and consolidates travel data—helping you make informed strategic decisions and improve employee satisfaction.