Bleisure travel is no longer a perk you can ignore. Your people are already doing it, often without telling anyone, and that is the part that should worry you.
The fix is not a ban. It is a clear policy that says what is allowed, who pays for what, and where your duty of care ends. (Check out our Bleisure Guilt Guide)
Bleisure travel is a business trip extended for personal leisure, where an employee adds days at the start or end of a work trip for their own time. It blends “business” and “leisure” into one journey.
A “workation” is the related idea of working remotely from a holiday destination. Both need clear rules on cost, insurance, and duty of care.
The trend is real and growing. A recent survey found that 76% of UK SMEs now typically extend overseas business trips for leisure or personal time, up sharply from 48% the year before.
If three in four of your competitors are dealing with this, you need a position on it too.
Why bleisure travel matters to your business
Treated well, bleisure is cheap goodwill. The flight is already booked and paid for. Letting someone stay an extra weekend costs you very little and buys real loyalty.
Research suggests most business travellers think adding personal time improves the trip, and a large share now see it as a genuine job perk.
There is a recruitment angle too. If your travel policy quietly allows people to make more of their trips, you look like a modern employer without spending much to get there.
That is the commercial case, and it is a good one.
But there is a flip side. The moment a trip stops being purely for work, the lines blur. Who pays for the extra hotel nights? Is the employee insured on the leisure days?
If something goes wrong on a Saturday they spent sightseeing, are you still responsible? Handle those questions in advance and bleisure is an easy win. Leave them unanswered and you are carrying risk you cannot see.
The risks of letting it happen by accident
Most companies do not decide to allow bleisure. It just happens, one extended trip at a time, until it is custom and practice with no rules attached.
That is the worst of both worlds. You get the liability without the control.
The three things that catch businesses out:
- Duty of care. Your legal responsibility for an employee’s safety does not pause neatly at 5pm on the last day of business. If the leisure portion is not clearly defined, you may still be on the hook when something goes wrong. Vague arrangements help no one.
- Cost leakage. Without a rule, employees book the whole trip on the company card and sort out the personal bit later, or never. You end up paying for leisure nights, upgraded rooms, and changed flights that should have been theirs to fund.
- Tax and expenses. HMRC treats the business and personal parts of a trip differently. Get the split wrong and you create a benefit-in-kind problem or an expenses claim that does not stand up. We cover the detail in our guide to HMRC business travel expenses.
None of these is hard to manage. They are only dangerous when no one has written down the answer.
What a good bleisure policy covers
A workstation or bleisure policy does not need to be long. It needs to be clear. The point is that an employee, a manager, and finance all read it and reach the same conclusion. A few clauses do most of the work.
Who pays for what
State plainly that the business covers the work portion only: the flights it would have booked anyway, the hotel for work nights, and the expenses tied to the job.
Everything in the leisure extension, extra nights, meals, activities, and any fare difference from changing the return date, is the employee’s to fund. Make the split explicit so there is no awkward conversation later.
How the leisure days are recorded
Decide whether the extra days come out of annual leave and how they get logged.
The cleaner the record, the easier the duty-of-care and tax position becomes. Ambiguity here is what creates the problems further down.
Where your duty of care ends
Define when the business trip starts and stops, and say in writing what support the company provides during the leisure portion and what it does not. Be honest about it.
Travel insurance often distinguishes between business and personal travel, so check whether your policy covers the leisure days at all, and tell employees if it does not so they can arrange their own cover.
Approval and booking
Require sign-off before the trip is booked, not after. That one rule prevents most of the cost and tax headaches, because the split is agreed while it can still be acted on.
It also gives whoever manages your travel a clean instruction to book against.
For the wider document this sits inside, see our guide to creating a business travel policy. A bleisure clause works best as part of that, not as a separate file no one can find.
How a travel management company makes bleisure simple
This is where the right setup earns its keep. The hard part of bleisure is not the idea. It is the admin: splitting the booking cleanly, keeping the cost lines separate, and tracking who is where when only part of the trip is your responsibility.
A good travel management company handles that quietly in the background. The business portion is booked, costed, and reported as company travel.
The personal extension is flagged and separated so finance sees a clean line and your reporting stays accurate.
When an employee wants to add days, a named consultant sorts the fare difference and the split there and then, rather than leaving it for someone to untangle from a credit card statement three weeks later.
Duty of care gets easier too. Real-time traveller tracking tells you where your people are and which part of the trip they are on, so your responsibility is recorded rather than assumed.
That matters most for SME travel management, where there is rarely a dedicated travel team to chase the detail.
The point of a managed programme is not to police bleisure. It is to make saying yes to it effortless and safe. Automation handles the splitting and the tracking.
Your consultant handles the judgement calls. You get the goodwill without the risk. That is what good corporate travel management should do with any travel trend: turn it from a liability into something you control.
Bleisure done properly is a quiet advantage
The companies getting bleisure right are not the ones with the longest policies. They are the ones who decided in advance who pays, where their duty of care sits, and how the trip gets booked, then made the booking process handle the rest.
Decide the rules once, write them down, and let your travel setup enforce them. Do that and a growing employee expectation becomes a low-cost perk you control, rather than a risk you are quietly carrying.
Frequently asked questions
What is bleisure travel?
Bleisure travel is a business trip extended for personal leisure, where an employee adds days before or after a work trip for their own time.
It combines “business” and “leisure” in one journey. A workation is the related idea of working remotely from a holiday location.
Is bleisure travel taxable in the UK?
The business portion of a trip is a legitimate business expense. The personal extension is not, and getting the split wrong can create a benefit-in-kind issue.
The cleanest approach is to separate the two costs at the point of booking.
Who pays for the leisure part of a bleisure trip?
The employee. A clear policy states that the business covers the work portion only, including the flights and hotel it would have booked anyway, while extra nights, meals, activities, and any change in fare from extending the trip are the employee’s to fund.
Are employees covered by duty of care during the leisure part of a trip?
Not automatically, and this is where businesses get caught out. Your duty of care and your travel insurance may not extend to the personal days.
Define in writing when the business trip ends and what support applies during the leisure portion, and tell employees to arrange their own cover if yours does not reach.
How do you manage bleisure travel as an SME?
Set a short, clear policy covering who pays, how leisure days are recorded, and where duty of care ends, then require approval before booking.
A travel management company makes this simple by splitting the business and personal costs at the point of booking and tracking travellers throughout. See SME travel management.
Bleisure is happening in your business whether or not you have a policy for it. The only real choice is whether you manage it on purpose or carry the risk by accident.
Talk to us and we will help you set a bleisure policy that is easy to follow and easy to enforce.