The business travel landscape has changed dramatically since the Covid pandemic. With Zoom and Teams meetings now woven into the fabric of society, travelling for business has become more heavily scrutinised. Yet savvy agents are recognising opportunities to cross-sell business and leisure bookings.
The term “bleisure” is often used among consumers to refer to trips combining business with a holiday or a few days at leisure. Within the industry, however, it’s applicable for agents who sell both business and leisure travel. Typically, the two have been fairly siloed, but agents prepared to develop their skill set can expand their reach, offer clients a more comprehensive service and generate revenue in their quieter months.
Andrea Caulfield-Smith, managing director global business travel of The Advantage Travel Partnership, asserts that the consortia is seeing a number of TMCs and travel agents now offering both business and leisure travel services to clients wanting the reassurance of booking with an expert that they trust.
“Travellers want to know they will be supported if and when travel plans are disrupted, which remains an issue with strikes, airport disruption and cancellations,” she says.
Here three agents explain how branching into bleisure has benefited themselves and their customer base.
EXPANDING EXPERTISE
Colletts Travel, part of Global Travel Collection, has seen an increase in corporate advisors booking clients’ leisure trips, giving them a steadier revenue stream year-round.
Vice-president Francesca Mendola says: “Post-pandemic we have seen more corporate and entertainment agents move into bleisure. Previously they would get leisure enquiries and say, ‘Sorry I don’t deal with that’.”
The growth has been facilitated by Colletts Collection, a B2B tour operator division that launched in 2021. Mendola explains that the tour operator arm acts as a support for their corporate advisors’ leisure enquiries.
“Colletts Collection has seen 75% growth in leisure bookings over the past year and forward bookings have doubled,” she says.
Once a client has made a leisure booking, there is often a snowball effect within their network. “One corporate agent had a client in a private equity firm. They got in touch for a Belmond trip on the Eastern & Oriental Express worth £29,000. Once they had booked, there was interest from other executive assistants in that firm for their clients. It shows the value of that advisor,” Mendola highlights.
The company encourages corporate advisors to be proactive about asking their clients for leisure bookings and supports them with marketing tools such as white label newsletters. “We also do product training and send out booking success stories, which can be very inspirational,” adds Mendola.
WORKING AS A TEAM
Creating multi-faceted “TC Teams” that include both business travel agents and specialist leisure experts has allowed Travel Counsellors to broaden their offering.
Karina Fox-Andrews, director of sales and performance, says: “Our Travel Counsellors (TCs) can grow their business by offering both corporate and leisure travel services. More than 60% of our UK TCs now collaborate with other TCs by working in TC Teams.”
Gold Travel Counsellor Clare Bennett specialises in corporate travel. Working in a TC Team, means she can pass purely leisure-based enquiries from loyal clients on to her expert colleagues.
She explains: “I use the TC team to have quite a varied business. The majority of what I do is corporate and a lot of A-to-B type bookings, but I introduce leisure to all my corporate clients and have a team of experts who can book that for them.
“From my perspective, if business travel took a dive, the fact that I have built up a corporate relationship means I would still have leisure clients to book,” she explains.
GROWING INTEREST
It’s not just corporate agents benefiting from bleisure. Leigh Bladen is a homeworker with Hays Travel, he says while he is not a corporate agent as such, business bookings have been increasingly “creeping in”.
He continues: “It started with a high-net-worth client I book leisure travel for. I have just done a £137,000 booking to Barbados for his family, but I also book his business travel.
“It’s mostly UK-based hotels and train travel, but I’ll often get briefs that involve him needing to be in London for 3pm, on the Eurostar to Brussels by 8am the next morning, a hotel and restaurant for lunch in Brussels and then back in his living room by 3pm the following day,” he explains.
Gradually, word of mouth has spread and Bladen is receiving more corporate bookings. One involved getting 13 business people based all over the UK to the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas in time for a technology expo.
“Business travel will never be at the forefront of my business, but it works for customers as they trust and recommend me and it means I have more frequent communication with them and I grow my revenue,” Bladen says.
