Bleisure Travel - A modern travel trend with great potential.

To meet the increasingly sophisticated tastes of tourists and to update the situation of business tourism worldwide, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, in collaboration with Nova Hospitality, is organizing a seminar on the potential of business tourism in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam. This aims to create a space for exchanging experiences, visions, potential, and challenges between tourism businesses wishing to exploit this type of tourism and management agencies in Ho Chi Minh City.

Under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people have been changing their behavior, habits, and travel decisions. As a result, traditional tourism activities are gradually changing, being replaced by other creative and unique forms of tourism, while still meeting the needs of travel enthusiasts for relaxation and exploration of new lands. Among these is "bleisure travel"—business travel—which, while not a new type of tourism, is predicted to become a trend in the near future.

"Bleisure travel" refers to a form of business travel that combines work with leisure and entertainment. With this type of travel, travelers spend several days at their business location to relax, enjoy leisure activities, participate in sightseeing, sample local cuisine, and attend events to explore the destination outside of their work hours. This is a popular choice for many businesspeople and companies to combine with business trips.

The workshop was attended by the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, representatives of industry management agencies, representatives of the Tourism Association, airlines, and domestic and regional travel and hotel businesses. Through organizing the workshop, the Ho Chi Minh City tourism industry aims to provide Vietnamese and regional tourism businesses with a comprehensive overview of current trends and potential in business tourism, as well as methods for approaching and exploiting this tourism market.

In her opening remarks at the workshop, Ms. Phan Thi Thang, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, shared, “Ho Chi Minh City is a gateway and transportation hub connecting with provinces and cities nationwide and internationally via all means of transport, including road, air, water, and rail, along with the distinctive features of many famous architectural and heritage sites, diverse infrastructure, products, and services. Furthermore, the city currently has over 4,000 accommodation establishments with nearly 50,000 rooms, approximately 1,280 travel agencies, and 6,934 tour guides, with nearly 60% being international guides. With these comparative advantages, we hope that the city's tourism industry will have many opportunities to leverage and anticipate this new trend.”

The seminar brought together 7 specialized presentations delivered by more than 7 experts and senior managers from the fields of restaurants, hotels, aviation, and real estate services.

Throughout the workshop, multidisciplinary perspectives were explored, with analyses covering various aspects such as: solutions to attract business travelers to the city; trends and opportunities for business tourism in Ho Chi Minh City; improving the quality of the tourism service industry in Vietnam; and solutions to encourage business travelers to return to hotels.

In addition, the workshop also discussed public-private partnership strategies in regional linkages to create business-oriented tourist destinations; the role of airlines in developing bleisure tourism; and solutions to enhance the visitor experience at Vietnamese airports.

Furthermore, through collaboration with the Government, local departments and agencies, as well as continuous cooperation with leading hotel operators worldwide, we aim to contribute to making Vietnam a leading regional hub for business trips combined with sightseeing and leisure.

Anh Thi