When a conference in Miami coincided with Sarah LeMoine’s 24th birthday, she arranged for a friend to join her and turned the work trip into a mini vacation.
And when LeMoine’s job took her to Los Angeles from her home in Canada, LeMoine again added on a few days of personal travel. She spent the weekend exploring the city and creating content for her 57,000 TikTok followers.
“You don’t need a man to fly you out for free vacations. You just need to work a corporate job that has travel perks,” LeMoine explained in a recent TikTok. “I’m always going to make the most of business trips and traveling for work because it’s free travel.”
Approaching a work trip as an opportunity to stay at a fancy hotel or enjoy an especially nice meal on someone else’s dime is not new to Gen Z. But, in an environment of increasingly relaxed work-life boundaries, supplementing a business trip with some vacation time has become one of the generation’s favorite travel hacks.
Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z workers say they bundle business and personal travel, according to a Harris Poll survey conducted for the business travel platform Engine. Meanwhile, Gen Z business travelers are also more likely than other generations to extend a work trip, according to Hotels.com’s Business Trip Report.
Compared to the sullen, briefcase-carrying road warriors of old — catching flights to windowless convention halls and drinking alone at the hotel bar — Zoomers are more likely to quietly bring along a plus-one and find ways to extract maximum enjoyment from a trip they’ll be making anyway.
For LeMoine’s experience-driven generation, a trip’s a trip, whether it started out as a vacation or has the potential to become one.
“Younger generations are so experience-oriented and savvy about travel,” says Christie Hudson, a travel expert for Hotels.com. They’re “posting their upgraded flights, their cute outfits, and hotel room — and then going to the conference. It’s definitely a different vibe.”
Zoomers, and to a lesser extent millennials, are not only extra-excited at the prospect of a work trip — they’re also more likely than older generations to reach into their own pockets to have a more luxurious experience.
Nearly nine in ten Zoomers and seven in ten millennials see work trips as a chance to upgrade their lifestyles, the Hotels.com report found. They’re more than twice as likely to pay out of pocket to upgrade a flight compared to older colleagues and roughly two-thirds have personally paid to switch to a nicer hotel, compared to just half of those from older generations.
“If it was a pretty good price, like $300 to $500, I would definitely go for it,” says LeMoine. She describes herself as budget-conscious and says she would draw the line at paying over $1,000 for an upgrade.
They’re also more likely to extend their stay at a nice hotel and take advantage of their company’s corporate rate.
Emily Nasser, 26, works for a company that hosts conferences and travels to luxury venues multiple times a year from her home in Toronto. She adores travel, but now almost exclusively vacations where she has to go anyway for work.
Last November, after attending a conference at the luxurious Ojai Valley Inn, Nasser invited a friend to join her for a few extra days to take advantage of the corporate rate. She says they paid $389 for a room that would have cost $800 without the discount.
“It was amazing,” Nasser says. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do that unless I was sent to that event for my job.”
Another time, when a business trip to Orlando included a stay at the Ritz-Carlton, Nasser invited her boyfriend to tag along.
As regular business travellers will attest, a work trip is more likely to take you to Cleveland than the Caribbean. And while most of Nasser’s work takes her to California or Florida, she’s holding out hope for a more exotic location soon. “Europe is always my dream to go to,” Nasser says.
Generally speaking, young professionals are more likely to be up for a long journey if it means reaching a bucket-list destination at the other end. While older professionals welcome a chance to go to London, according to the Hotels.com survey, Tokyo is a top pick among Zoomers.
And one thing business travellers of all ages have in common: it’s a points economy.
For a generation of credit card users, business trips can be a lucrative way to build up points, and collect perks to stretch their money as far as it will go. More than half of Gen Z already rely on credit card points and rewards to pay for travel expenses, according to a study conducted by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma. Almost half of Gen Z business travellers make work travel choices based on maximising rewards and 42% of millennials have cashed them in for cheap hotels or upgraded flights later down the line, according to Hotels.com.
Take a cursory scroll through social media and you’ll think that business class is full of 20-somethings sipping champagne and doing their skincare mid-flight.
Gen Z has grown up watching influencers be treated to all-expenses-paid, business-class trips, giving hotel room tours of expensive suites and ordering room service. It makes sense that a new generation of business travellers want a taste of that for themselves, even if they need to pay for the upgrades out of pocket.
Yet, for a generation deep in the trenches of buy-now-pay-later and drowning in personal debt, keeping up with the Joneses can create problems if Zoomers are upgrading out of pocket for experiences they can’t yet afford.
“Here’s the real crux of Gen Z,” says Grace McCarrick, a keynote speaker focused on soft skills education and bridging the gap between internet and professional culture. “So much of their understanding about the adult world is built on theory and observation rather than experience.”
McCarrick notes, “the algorithm makes it feel normal, but in reality, most people are in coach—maybe Delta Comfort.”
Still, tacking a vacation onto a trip that your employer has already paid for can be a sensible choice.
And, in the era of side hustles and influencer culture, business trips are also prime content opportunities — which could mean adding on the extra days will pay for itself.
For a generation encouraged to go through life as the “main character” and romanticise their day-to-day life, that’s exactly what they are doing. Zoomers post 3 to 5 times more per day on social media than their older colleagues while on work trips, with 75% splurging on high-end dinners and entertainment just to get better content, according to Hotels.com.
“I try showing that I’m grateful, as opposed to, ‘Look at me! I get to do this,'” says Nasser, who posts under the name ‘THAT Corporate Girl’ to over 100,000 followers on TikTok. “I definitely use it to my advantage to post because why wouldn’t I if I’m in a beautiful spot in a new city.”
While Nasser’s company is supportive of her TikTok channel, not all will be. Prolific posting can create tension when it comes to filing the expense reports.
“If people are upgrading hotels or airfare, be smart about it,” advises McCarrick. “If you know you’re flying with other people and everyone’s flying coach, don’t be the youngest person on the team upgrading yourself. That looks crazy.”
“An attitude of entitlement, “I deserve this”, will always be tough for colleagues to swallow,” she says.
At the same time, employers who discourage work-vacation bundling might find that potential employees take notice. For a professional cohort who are working to live, rather than living to work, a business trip that’s all work and no play may lead younger employees to disengage and seek out more flexibility elsewhere.
“Younger workers do pay attention to how flexible employers are. They might be drawn to companies that encourage experiences and don’t micromanage travel,” says Hudson. “Younger employees care about time-off policies and work-life balance, and this all fits into that.”
Nasser concurs. “I love showing that there are companies out there that do do this,” she says. “And, if you’re not happy at your company, well, maybe you should look at corporate events or a company that does allow you to travel.”
Eve Upton-Clark is a freelance writer covering culture and society.
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