On a Sunday in late January, Melinda Bachman, who lives in Florida and oversees customer relations at RevShoppe, a 30-person remote company that advises organizations on sales techniques and strategies, completed a four-day company launch. I arrived in Banff, Alberta to help. meeting.
Her husband, Josh, who is director of strategic partnerships for delivery company DoorDash, also worked remotely and participated in the final day of the event. They spent two relaxing days hiking in Banff National Park and visiting Lake Louise.
“I take advantage of it because I don't know when I'm going to be back,” Buchman said of her decision to combine downtime with business travel.
As work life has changed post-pandemic, with arrangements now including full-time office work as well as hybrid and remote working, business travel has changed as well. This phenomenon, known as breisure, or combined business and leisure travel, was initially embraced primarily by digital nomads. However, such combination trips are now popular with people outside of that group as well. Allied Market Research, a Portland, Oregon-based subsidiary of Allied Analytics, projects the leisure travel market to be worth $315.3 billion in 2022 and reach $731.4 billion by 2032.
As employees increasingly add leisure time to their business trips, companies are struggling to determine where their legal duty to protect employees from harm, the so-called duty of care, begins and ends. Additionally, employees may think that because their trip started as a business trip, they will have all the help they need if something goes wrong while on a leisure trip. Instead, you should think of the leisure portion of your trip as a regular vacation that covers all expenses and contingencies.
Companies need to know where their employees are on business trips, cover costs in the event of an accident or emergency, secure new accommodation if a hotel is damaged, or even break down. You are responsible for replacing the rental car. However, it is not entirely clear whether that coverage completely ends after the conference or the final client meeting.
Robert Cole, senior research analyst specializing in lodging and leisure travel at market research firm Focuslight, said businesses are aware of the growing threat. They are trying to figure out how to manage their company's valuable resource, their employees, without exposing themselves to financial risk or potential litigation.
“It's difficult to develop comprehensive policies that balance business objectives, employee welfare, and legal considerations,” said Nikolaos Gokolfinopoulos, director of tourism at ICF, a consulting and technology services firm in Reston, Virginia. “There may be cases,” he wrote in an email.
Suzanne Moreau, CEO of InsureMyTrip, an online insurance travel comparison site in Warwick, R.I., said employees could be on their own without realizing it, requiring hospitalization or evacuation overseas. You may be surprised at how much you will have to pay out-of-pocket if you do.
Morrow said company-provided medical insurance “typically only covers the actual international travel days.” If travelers extend their trip for personal travel, “they will want to secure emergency medical insurance for the additional period abroad,” she added.
Employers and employees need to determine when the business portion of the trip ends and the leisure portion begins, which is critical if an employee has a medical emergency. “How long does corporate responsibility last?” said Kathy Bedell, senior vice president at travel management company BCD Travel.
Companies have different policies to deal with the new travel convergence. Patricia McLaren, CEO of Austin, Texas-based RevShoppe, said the company offers flexible travel options and allows employees to work wherever they want.
Still, there are limitations. The company requires all employees, including executives, to sign liability and insurance waivers when participating in voluntary company-sponsored travel, such as off-site meetings. Such waivers typically hold employees responsible for their own health. And if they bring someone with them, they will be responsible for that person's expenses.
Employees are responsible for requesting paid leave and notifying their supervisors of their whereabouts, but that part is not required. Mr McLaren said management needed to ensure adequate staffing levels.
In other regions, employees may not bother mentioning the leisure portion of the trip. Elliot Rees, vice president and managing director of ICF, said that as a child, he would travel with his parents for a combination of business and leisure. His parents were academics and used his vacation time to attend academic conferences.
Now he's doing the same. “I don't think he ever asked for approval,” he said. (ICF has no formal business and leisure travel regulations; it is allowed as part of a personal vacation.) After a conference in the Netherlands last year, he spent four days hiking in the north of the Netherlands.
“I'll go anywhere and take more risks than I have to,” he said. He did not have personal travel insurance or accident insurance.
When a threat emerges, even casualties can quickly disappear. Security experts say even low-risk locations can be high-risk for days or weeks out of the year.
“Companies can lose visibility into a traveler's whereabouts if they book a flight or hotel with someone other than their own travel management company,” Benjamin Thorne, London-based senior intelligence manager at Gardaworld subsidiary Crisis24, said in an email. I'm concerned about that.” “Companies may think that a traveler is in one city when in fact they could have booked a holiday package to another nearby city. Traveler support will be difficult.”
He also mentioned the possibility that “travelers who have booked and are anticipating leisure travel could find their business trip canceled and their leisure plans disrupted due to changes in the risk environment or company policy.”
If there is a problem, will the company come to work outside of business hours? “It depends on how you book it,” said Cole, a senior research analyst at Focus Light. A good rule of thumb is that the further away you are from corporate control, the greater the gray area.
Will Tate, a certified public accountant and partner at a Crossroads, Texas-based consulting firm, says half of Goldspring Consulting's clients are responsible for their entire trip. They don't want reputational risk. The other half says, “The trip ended on Friday. At that point, our duty of care ends.”
Some companies are trying to define and narrow the gray area. “If it's clearly a private time, there's no legal requirement for an employer to do so,” said Nicole Page, an employment lawyer at Reavis Page Jump in New York. .
Uber provides its employees with pre-travel advice, trip reviews, travel safety tips, and assistance with medical assistance, airport travel support, emergency assistance, emergency assistance, and personal property protection, whether traveling for business or pleasure. We provide emergency travel assistance, including loss or theft insurance. combination.
In addition, Chris Cherry, DoorDash's head of global safety and security, said in an email: “Although personal travel is not tracked, we have received requests to extend our travel support capabilities to personal travel. I am,” he wrote. Cherry said that in such cases, the company manually adds employees' leisure itineraries into its travel risk management system, “providing the same level of oversight as for regular business travel.”
The Bachmanns will be traveling to Barcelona, Spain, this month for the McDonald's World Championship. DoorDash will have a booth and Buchmann will work the exhibit floor and entertain customers.
Ms. Buchmann is also scheduled to accompany her. She plans to go sightseeing in the morning Barcelona time and work in the afternoon and evening. She also took three days of paid leave and shared her plans with RevShoppe's chief executive, Ms McLaren.
They will stay the day after the conference and visit Figueres' Dali Theater and Museum. “There will be no shortage of tapas and window shopping along the way,” Buchmann said. He plans to return to work next Monday.
