90% surveyed by Leavetown.com plan to take trips over the next 12 months to include both remote work and vacation – evidence of travelers extending their stays.
VANCOUVER, CANADA – Leavetown.com, the short-term rental booking platform for the savvy independent traveler, has surveyed its customers and confirmed that the new way to travel is emerging as travelers choose to combine work with leisure time and book longer stays in one place. 81% think they will continue to work remotely post pandemic, at least part of the time, showing a shift towards more flexible schedules and locations for those who can make it work.
Many of us are deciding to dip our toes into the enticing lifestyle option of being a digital nomad – by booking extended stays to bolt on travel experiences or family time after working remotely. The pandemic has changed the way we work irreversibly and employees now have more leeway to choose how, when and where they work for more of the time.
The trend for extended stays is partly driven by travelers realising the benefits of remote working, teching up to be digitally self-sufficient and changing the way they travel as aresult. 65% of those surveyed by Leavetown said they are feeling more optimistic about working remotely – it’s like we’ve got over the mental hurdle of thinking we have to be ‘present’ physically in an office to be ‘at work’.
Emmanuel Lavoie, COO of Leavetown, explains that “It’s a liberating feeling when you make the personal and professional decision to live and work more flexibly. I believe, from what we are seeing with bookings and data from Leavetown, that travelers are beginning to travel in a very different way than before the pandemic. They are booking a mountain cabin in the Canadian Rockies, putting in 5 days work remotely, then hanging out with friends climbing at the weekend. That’s a pretty incredible way to live – one which many on the Leavetown.com team have adopted ourselves.”
Recent Skift research shows that “Digital nomadism is breaking out into the mainstream after years of being available only to a few career paths. This trend is poised to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the travel industry, in some cases transforming rent into hospitality stays and other travel spend.”
With more workers ready to use up additional holiday days saved in 2020 for trips in 2021, and with more us working and living more flexibly, this new way of traveling looks set to stay. Combining work and play through travel could be the long searched for solution to the work/life balance problem so many workers face.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
