Hold off pitching your travel industry client's 14-day sightseeing tours and figure out how their product or service will work for the business traveler who wants a little vacation fling.
Instead of targeting the overworked businessperson looking to escape for a couple weeks, aim for those who want a little taste of vacation while working away from home.
According to the 1999 OAG Business Travel Lifestyle Survey, business executives take an average of 21 business trips annually. More than one in five business travelers (21 percent) combined vacation with business travel on their most recent trip, representing 9.3 million business travelers in that category (up from 8.8 million two years earlier), according to OAG, the parent company of Frequent Flyer magazine, which released the survey in October.
The media's noticed this trend, and so should your pitch. Whether your client is a tourism company, a Web travel agent or the maker of a product that helps savvy businessmen and women combine work and play (i.e., luggage that holds clothes and business proposals, laptops, etc.), think quick trips.
Hemispheres magazine mirrors this trend with its monthly section, "Three Perfect Days," which features a native's perspective on the best way to maximize short vacation time in a particular city (see this week's Media Insight for pitch tips).
The section was added for the increasing number of business travelers who want to "plug a three-day trip into a business trip," and extend business trips at desirable destinations into weekend vacations, according to Editor Randy Johnson.
The section was commended by trend writer John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends and High Tech High Touch. In the latter, Naisbitt notes weekend holiday pleasure trips constituted the majority of the increase in weekend holidays in the 1990s. Today's traveler, he says, more than ever combines three-day vacations with business trips.
But don't just pitch your travel solutions to travel magazines.
The new "Personal Business" column in Beyond Computing's April 2000 issue will feature suggestions for combining a business trip and vacation (check out www.beyondcomputingmag/edcal1.html and send pitches to Editor, Beyond Computing, 590 Madison Ave., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022).
According to OAG, compared to travelers who travel for business only, travelers that mix business and vacation trips are:
- slightly more likely to be female;
- more likely to be single;
- more likely to belong to households with two or more adults but no children.
(OAG, Peter Duckler, 312/649-0371, [email protected]).