It was the first glimmer of hope for the beleaguered travel industry in 2020 when locked-down citizens started doing something new amid the pandemic: not working from home, but working from anywhere. Off they’d go for weeks or months at a time, to any locale with good surf and better Wi-Fi, to show off a new Zoom background after early morning swims.
Today the era of decamping from your hometown might seem as far in the rearview mirror as a five-day, in-person workweek might appear on the horizon. But a new version of the trend is emerging — and it could prove a serious boon for the travel industry.
The ability to work from home is profoundly, and permanently, changing the way we travel. More lenient office policies mean many workers can travel anytime, even during busy workweeks, as long as they can hit deadlines from far afield. That, in turn, has made it easier for people to travel more frequently and for longer amounts of time, sometimes unlocking farther-flung destinations. The mixing of work and play, which some industry insiders (annoyingly) refer to as "bleisure” (business plus leisure) travel, has greatly helped airlines make up for lost traffic.