According to this recent WSJ article, 60% of Marriott’s hotel stays in 2019 were for business travel. Given that this travel segment is believed to be one of the most permanently impacted by soul-sucking virtual meetings, the company has announced that it will be working to turn its hotels, or at least some of them, into “bleisure” destinations.
The idea here, as I understand it, is that if this pandemic does in fact result in greater work flexibility, but less business travel, then this could be a way to target people who are “working from anywhere.” Don’t travel for work; work while you travel, is I guess how you could spin this.
I’m not clear yet on how exactly this gets executed, but it sounds somewhat similar to the coliving/coworking spaces that currently cater to digital nomads and other location-agnostic professionals. Examples include companies like Outpost and Outsite.
Regardless of whether or not this is actually practical, productive, and scalable (it could be), I think the idea of working from different (and potentially exotic) locations all around the world is a compelling concept for many people. Especially right now after a year of mostly working from the kitchen table.
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