May 13, 2022 "Work trips are starting to look a lot like vacations": Today I found this article by Emma Jacobs in the Financial Post:
It pains me to say this, but 2022 may finally be the moment for bleisure, the ugly portmanteau describing a cross between business travel and leisure.
I appreciate this makes me sound like I am in the pay of Big Bleisure. For as long as I have written about work, someone or other from the business travel sector has tried to persuade me that bleisure is on the rise.
After all, the hotel and airline industries are desperate to make up for lost revenues.
While it is hardly new to tack a weekend of sightseeing on to an overseas conference, this time, as business travel starts to pick up and COVID restrictions end, there are reasons to believe we are entering the era of bleisure.
This is because workers are more flexible and keen to explore.
Airbnb said that in 2021 about 20 per cent of nights booked were for visits of a month or more.
In a letter to shareholders, the company cited the example of Jason, an Airbnb host in Chicago who has seen his bookings change as more guests stayed longer, visiting family and the city while working remotely from local Chicago offices, or attending a conference.
Airbnb itself last month announced that employees can work anywhere in their home country without any change to their pay, and can relocate to another country for up to 90 days a year.
Meanwhile, a report on travel by Deloitte has identified “laptop luggers” as “workers newly untethered from the office” with the desire to fit in some work while on vacation.
They take more journeys, “adding days and dollars to those trips. (They) have above-average buying power (and) greater flexibility on travel dates.”
The business travel sector needs new sources of income. Several hotel groups, including Hilton, offer WFH (work from hotel) packages, including day hire of rooms for workers wanting quiet time to focus outside the home and office.
Richard Valtr, founder of Mews, a company that helps hotels manage their rooms and services, has observed a sharp rise in hotels providing additional bookable services such as meeting rooms, use of hotel rooms during the day and co-working areas.
This blurring of work and leisure is also shaped by employers making some aspects of work more like a holiday. As employees spend time apart, companies are trying to dream up creative ways to bring them together.
The remote workforce at 3Thinkrs, a small PR agency, is encouraged to work from different locations. Recently the whole company went to Amsterdam for four days. There were meetings, dinners and drinks, but they also had time off to explore the city.
Salesforce has recently opened a resort, what it calls a Trailblazer Ranch, in Scotts Valley, California, for employees to collaborate, take part in training and immerse themselves in the company’s culture. It is easy to mock.
The tech company is practically begging for it with a statement saying the ranch is offering “tactile experiences like guided nature walks, restorative yoga, garden tours, group cooking classes, art journaling and meditation.”
But Salesforce may be on to something. It is discombobulating to return to the office and assume our normal lives as if we hadn’t just had two very weird years.
Group events mark a sense of occasion.
And encouraging workers to expand their horizons after months of being stuck indoors is good for morale and creativity.
The merging of work and leisure is happening at an extraordinary pace. Evan Konwiser, an executive vice-president at American Express Global Business Travel, speaking on a forthcoming episode of the FT’s Working It podcast, says some employers are helping plan and pay for staff holidays.
The risk is that we merge work and vacation so we can never switch off. Ruth Jones, the founder of 3Thinkrs, says she has had to make clear that employees about to go on a break must undertake a week-long handover and switch off email and Slack.
One danger of all this blurring is that work infects not just our personal lives but also the places we visit — cafés, clubs and hotels.
Work creep became ubiquitous in the pandemic, but now we risk office creep.
In the rush to create new places for flexible workers to fire up their laptops, the hospitality industry is starting to resemble one big wacky workplace.
When I visited a new branch of Soho House, the private members’ club, it didn’t seem so different from any co-working space.
I suspect most people don’t mind leisure encroaching on their work but hate it when the office impinges on their leisure. For this reason, hotels and cafés should set boundaries too.
Recently I visited a hotel that catered to co-workers and office away days. For an office trip it seemed fun. But for a holidayer it felt oppressive and I felt peer pressure from people who weren’t even my peers. So much so that I opened my laptop and did a spot of writing.
If this is the year of bleisure, we must never forget the leisure.
© 2022 The Financial Times Ltd.
Work trips are starting to look a lot like vacations | Financial Post
Jun. 30, 2022 "Working from a tropical island is the new working from home": Today I found this article by Michelle Jamrisko, Suttinee Yuvejwattana and Claire Jiao on the Financial Post:
In the new world of work, there’s a new type of employee: The business-leisure traveller.
It’s the latest attempt to find a happy medium between working arrangements like Airbnb Inc.’s — where staff can work anywhere, anytime — and those at companies like Tesla Inc., whose chief executive officer Elon Musk tweeted that unless employees turn up in the office, “we will assume you have resigned.”
Business-leisure travellers are a subset of digital nomads,
living and working abroad for longer than a typical holiday without taking up permanent residence.
They usually spend weeks or months overseas before returning home,
while other nomads may spend years on the road.
David Abraham realized there was a market for this type of ultra-remote working while at his laptop in a Tokyo Starbucks.
When he noticed the customers around him were working too, he asked himself “why couldn’t they be in an amazing place like Bali?”
Abraham now runs Outpost, a company that provides temporary living-working spaces in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Employees’ growing enthusiasm for business-leisure travel is slowly being met with policy momentum.
Governments are trying to work out visa and tax regulations while businesses fret about compliance and corporate culture.
Officials in tourism hotspots Thailand and Indonesia see the longer-term travel trend working in their favour — if everyone can get the rules right.
On the Indonesian island of Bukabuka, a four-hour-plus journey by airplane and boat from the capital city of Jakarta, eco resort Reconnect is seeing a surge in inquiries from foreigners.
Now that borders have reopened, overseas visitors with plans to work remotely are booking sojourns of anywhere between a month and half a year.
The resort features large communal spaces and work stations, ready to accommodate the new cohort of business-leisure travellers. Most days, the internet is stable enough too.
“But the main selling point is really the island itself,” said Reconnect founder Thomas Despin.
Between Zoom meetings,
guests can go snorkelling,
learn the local art of spearfishing,
and even enjoy a barbecue in the middle of the sea.
There is one drawback: “Potential guests ask us, how legal is it for me to come and stay and work?” Despin said.
“At the moment, we don’t have a specific answer.”
Under Indonesian law, anyone who stays in the country for 183 days in a 12-month period is legally considered a tax resident.
But paying taxes requires a work permit commonly referred to as a KITAS, which isn’t available to those travelling on a tourist visa. That leaves some would-be business-leisure travellers in a legal grey area.
In April 2021, Indonesia floated the idea of a special five-year visa exempting remote workers from paying local taxes if they don’t earn an income domestically. But there’s no timeline as yet.
“You don’t want to just be hoping for the best when it comes to your visa status,” said Despin. “You want to know what the rules are.”
Colleagues of his have left Indonesia for Mexico, Portugal and neighbouring Thailand, where immigration and tax laws are more supportive and clearer.
Since 2019, more than two dozen countries have introduced “digital nomad” schemes that allow people to live and work remotely for a period of months or even years, according to Migration Policy Institute analyst Kate Hooper, who analyzed data from law firm Fragomen.
Thailand began experimenting early in the pandemic with programs designed to attract longer-term travellers, such as golf-course quarantines and “sandbox” arrangements.
The country got about one-fifth of its economic juice from tourism before COVID-19 arrived.
Now, in the spirit of targeting more digital nomads and business-leisure travellers, the government has approved tax incentives for long-term visa holders and will lift all remaining COVID-related entry restrictions from July 1.
The country has several plus points for longer-term visitors who also plan to work, according to tourism minister Phipat Ratchakitprakarn.
“The internet in Bangkok and in many big cities is fast,” he said, while
Thailand also offers “service and atmosphere” and a relatively low cost of living.
And, he added, “we don’t tax digital nomads. Their income is generated overseas.”
The next round of tax changes can’t come soon enough for the country’s still-struggling hospitality industry.
“I am sure we can compete in terms of fundamentals but the problem is policy implementation,” said Bhummikitti Ruktaengam, president of the Phuket Tourist Association. He argues that a simple visa application process is needed to attract working travellers.
“They won’t come if they need to fill up a pile of paperwork,” he said.
Longer-term visitors may bring economic benefits, but they can also create problems for the local population, a Migration Policy Institute report points out.
Wealthy visitors bring with them
rising costs of living,
increasing competition for resources
and associated tensions “as evidenced in existing hotspots such as Goa and Bali.”
While governments face a hefty set of challenges in marrying a tourism revival with ease of doing business, companies have their own list of concerns.
At established firms, chief financial officers often have little appetite for Airbnb-style worker freedom because of tax issues and other liabilities, according to Simon Hayes, director of the Asia CFO Network.
Yet many business leaders are accepting what their human resources departments already know: Most employers will be forced to keep up with the times.
Business-leisure travellers aside, tight labour markets around the world are giving workers the power to demand more flexibility.
Over the next three to six months, Hayes expects more companies to set up remote-work options for those employees who are trusted to get their jobs done on the beach or elsewhere.
There’s a clear willingness to at least consider looser policies around remote work, according to an Asia CFO Network survey of 31 multinational companies across the Asia-Pacific region.
But there are also significant concerns, with tax issues and “corporate culture dilution” at the top of the list.
“One issue is navigating the tax, social security, and employment and labour provisions of both countries to ensure compliance in both locations,” said MPI’s Hooper. Another is the risk of triggering permanent establishment rules that may incur corporate tax obligations, she said.
While business-leisure travel isn’t about to overtake other types of travel, it’s still an opportunity for tourism-heavy economies.
“It’s a growing segment but will remain a ‘niche’ segment,” said Margaux Constantin, a partner at McKinsey & Co. who leads the firm’s work in tourism.
The potential for high spending on longer-than-average trips makes business-leisure travellers an attractive market, she said.
“It’s not surprising to see that some destinations are actively prioritizing this segment as part of their tourism strategy.”
Working from a tropical island is the new working from home | Financial Post
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