Millennials are people born in the late eighties and nineties. Representatives of this generation grew up in the digital age, which seriously influenced their worldview and preferences. Today, it is millennials who play a leading role in the global economy, and many business sectors are changing under their influence.
Today we will talk about millennials and tourism, and more precisely, their influence on the sphere of b2b travel.
Millennials in tourism and a new type of business travel
Statistically, millennials love traveling more than their parents. They are always eager to explore a new city, even if they come there for work. This desire gave rise to a new phenomenon of so-called bleisure-travels.
The word bleisure is a combination of business and leisure. The essence of this phenomenon is that the employee is allowed to combine a business trip with a mini-vacation in the same city. This usually means that the employee is allowed to stay in the city for some time after completing a work assignment or take family members with him during the trip.
Millennials value the opportunity to combine work and travel—it can even play a key role in choosing an employer. This is also why the bleisure direction is growing extremely quickly – in the world the number of such trips is increasing by 20% annually.
The trend is actively developing in our country. For example, according to OneTwoTrip for Business, in January with its holidays, 93% of all foreign business trips of domestic companies took place on weekends. A similar situation is observed in the summer – 82% of all business trips in Russia take place on weekends.
Digitalization of business travel
Millennials are very active in using online tools to solve personal problems. They are accustomed to the convenience that new technologies provide. However, in the past there was often a gap between the level of development of “consumer” services and the level of digitalization that people encountered at work.
Very often, at work, employees had to use tools that were not at all as convenient as in their personal lives, and many processes that had long gone online turned out to be not digitized. It was the same with business trips.
Just a few years ago, the process of organizing a business trip was mainly “offline”, and involved interaction with various intermediaries. The selected travel agency sent requests for booking tickets and accommodation, compiled a list of options and, after selecting one of them, made the final reservation.
For the millennial generation, this all seems strange, given that for many years they have been able to organize a personal trip using online services in a couple of clicks. The old way of organizing business trips was inconvenient, did not give any control over the parameters of the trip and reduced choice.
However, in recent years, largely due to the growing influence of the millennial generation in business, the digitalization of business travel has accelerated. Today there are already tools for organizing b2b travel that work similarly to well-known “consumer” products. As a result, according to research by ADI (Adobe Digital Insights), 41% of business trips are organized using online tools.
Flexible configuration of travel parameters
It is critical for millennials to be involved in decisions and feel like their opinions matter. If we talk about organizing a business trip, this means that they would like to be able to influence the parameters of the trip: for example, choose a hotel within the budget or the type of transfer.
This will allow them to do what they do so well – collect information on the Internet (reviews), analyze it and choose the best option.
Work schedule is also important. Today, when remote work is extremely common and many cities have convenient coworking spaces, millennial employees do not always want to be in a local office all the time while traveling. It may be much more effective for them to work remotely or go to a coworking space near the hotel so as not to waste time.
Conclusion
Today, a large number of specialists in their fields, for natural reasons, belong to the millennial generation. Therefore, employers have to take into account the characteristics of this group. It is important for them to have the right to choose, to be flexible and to use truly convenient tools.
Therefore, we can safely assume that the trends driven by millennials will continue to develop. Therefore, we will soon see even more bleisure trips organized taking into account the opinions of employees, as well as convenient online travel services for the b2b segment.
