• Bleisure travel is rising as employees extend work trips to add on leisure activities.

• One bleisure traveler said he views it as a supplement to his dedicated vacation time.

• AllFly, which helps book corporate group travel, said demand for bleisure trips keeps growing.

When 25-year-old Josh Nichols had a short work trip to Hamburg, Germany, he and a coworker decided to add a couple extra days to stop by Belgium and France, two places he'd never been.

"I was already in Europe," Nichols, who works as an analyst for United Airlines, told Business Insider, "so I'm like, 'Let me just hop down and see these other countries.'"

The combination of business and leisure travel has become so popular that it has a name: bleisure travel, also referred to as blended travel.

While the trend has been growing for years, it got an extra boost during the pandemic when travel restrictions were lifted and business travel picked up again. In early 2022, American Airlines said more than half of its recently booked trips had been a mix of business and leisure travel, up from a historic average of around 20 to 25%.

A survey published by the American Hotel and Lodging Association in 2023 found nearly half of business travelers said they'd extended a work trip in the previous year, and 84% said they were interested in bleisure. Hilton's 2025 Travel Trends Report said nearly 30% of global travelers now take trips with "frolleagues" — colleagues who are also friends.

Kenny Totten, founder and COO of AllFly, which specializes in corporate group travel, told BI that companies are embracing the trend and making it easier for their employees to do it as a way to attract and retain talent.

Full Story:  AOL/Insider