Presentation

1) A brief overview of the topic

2) Additional information relevant to the topic

3) Analysis of the issues using theories and concepts from this course example please use these: Rights Theory, Utilitarian Theory, Social Contracts Theory, Stakeholder Theory

4) Three to five easy questions for the audience

4/21/24, 11:00 PM
Planning to Combine Business and Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travelcompany-responsiblity.html
Planning to Combine Business and
Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone.
As employees increasingly add leisure time to their business trips, companies are
trying to figure out where their duty of care obligations begin and end.
By Amy Zipkin
April 7, 2024
On a Sunday in late January, Melinda Buchmann, who lives in Florida and
supervises client relations for RevShoppe, a 30-person remote company advising
organizations on sales techniques and strategies, arrived in Banff, Alberta, to help
set up a four-day company meeting.
The last day of the event, her husband, Josh, a director of strategic partnerships for
the delivery company DoorDash, who also works remotely, joined her. They spent
two leisurely days hiking in Banff National Park and visiting Lake Louise.
“I take advantage, because I don’t know when I’m going to return,” Ms. Buchmann
said of the decision to combine downtime with a business trip.
As postpandemic work life has changed, and arrangements now include full-time
office attendance as well as hybrid and remote work, so, too, has business travel.
The phenomenon known as bleisure, or blended business and leisure travel, was
initially embraced largely by digital nomads. But such combined travel is now also
popular with people outside that group. Allied Market Research, a subsidiary of
Allied Analytics, based in Portland, Ore., estimated that the bleisure travel market
was $315.3 billion in 2022 and would reach $731.4 billion by 2032.
As employees increasingly add leisure time to their business trips, companies are
struggling to determine where their legal obligation to protect employees from
harm — their so-called duty of care — begins and ends. And workers may think
that because their trip started with business, they will get all the help they need if
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travel-company-responsiblity.html
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4/21/24, 11:00 PM
Planning to Combine Business and Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times
something goes wrong on the leisure end. Instead, they should generally consider
the leisure part of a trip as a regular vacation where they cover all expenses and
contingencies.
Companies are responsible for knowing where their employees are during a
business trip, covering expenses if an accident or emergency occurs, securing new
lodging if a hotel is damaged, even swapping out a broken down rental car. Still, it’s
not entirely clear if that coverage ends completely after the conference or the last
client meeting.
Companies recognize that threats are increasing, said Robert Cole, senior research
analyst focusing on lodging and leisure travel at Phocuswright, a market research
company. They are trying to figure out how to take care of a valuable company
resource, the employee, without leaving themselves open to financial risk or
potential litigation.
“Crafting a comprehensive policy that balances business objectives, employee
well-being and legal considerations can be challenging,” Nikolaos Gkolfinopoulos,
head of tourism at ICF, a consulting and technology services company in Reston,
Va., wrote in an email.
Employees may be on their own without realizing it and may be surprised by outof-pocket expenses if they require hospital care abroad or evacuation, said Suzanne
Morrow, chief executive of InsureMyTrip, an online insurance travel comparison
site in Warwick, R.I.
Ms. Morrow said medical coverage provided by a company “is generally only for
the dates of the actual business trip abroad.” If travelers are extending the trip for
personal travel, she added, “they would want to secure emergency medical
coverage for that additional time abroad.”
Employers and employees are left to figure out when the business portion of the
trip ends and the leisure segment begins, a significant detail if an employee has a
medical emergency. “Where does the corporation liability end?” said Kathy Bedell,
senior vice president at BCD Travel, a travel management company.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travel-company-responsiblity.html
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4/21/24, 11:00 PM
Planning to Combine Business and Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times
Companies have varying policies to deal with the new travel amalgam. The chief
executive of RevShoppe, Patricia McLaren, based in Austin, Texas, said the
company provided flexible travel options and allowed employees to work
anywhere they choose.
Even so, there are constraints. The company requires all employees, including
executives, to sign liability and insurance waivers when they are on a voluntary
company-sponsored trip, such as an off-site meeting. Such waivers typically place
responsibility on employees for their own well-being. And if they bring someone,
they are responsible for that person’s expenses.
Employees are responsible for requesting the paid time off and notifying their
managers of their whereabouts, although that part is not a requirement. Managers
have to ensure adequate staffing, Ms. McLaren said.
Elsewhere, employees may not bother to mention the leisure portion of their trip.
Eliot Lees, a vice president and managing director at ICF, said he had been on trips
as a child with his parents when they combined business and leisure. His parents
were academics, who would piggyback vacations onto conferences.
Now he does the same. “I don’t think I ever asked for approval,” he said. (ICF has
no formal business-leisure travel policy. It’s allowed as part of personal time off.)
After a conference in the Netherlands last year, he spent four days hiking in the
northern part of the country.
“I go anywhere, and take more risks than I should,” he said. He said he didn’t carry
personal travel or accident insurance.
Any nonchalance may quickly evaporate if a threat emerges. Security experts say
even low-risk locations can become high-risk for a few days or weeks of the year.
“Companies are concerned about losing visibility into a traveler’s whereabouts if
they booked flights and hotels outside their corporate travel management
company,” Benjamin Thorne, senior intelligence manager in London for Crisis24, a
subsidiary of GardaWorld, wrote in an email. “The company may think the traveler
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travel-company-responsiblity.html
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4/21/24, 11:00 PM
Planning to Combine Business and Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times
is in one city when, in reality, they could have booked a holiday package to another
nearby city. This lack of visibility by the company makes it difficult to support
travelers when a disaster occurs.”
He also raised the possibility that “a traveler with bleisure travel reservations and
expectations may find their work trip canceled due to changes in the risk
environment or company policy, disrupting their leisure plans.”
Will a company step in off hours if there’s a problem? “That depends on how you
are booked,” Mr. Cole, the senior research analyst at Phocuswright, said. A rule of
thumb is the further you get from corporate control, the greater the gray area gets.
Half of GoldSpring Consulting’s clients take the responsibility for the entire trip,
said Will Tate, a partner at the consultancy based in Cross Roads, Texas, and a
certified public accountant. They don’t want the reputational risk. The other half
say: “The business trip ended Friday. That’s when we end our duty of care.”
Some companies are trying to define and narrow the gray area. “If you are clearly
on personal time, there is no legal requirement for your employer to provide for
you,” said Nicole Page, a lawyer whose practice includes employment law at Reavis
Page Jump in New York.
Uber provides employees with advisories before a trip, travel assessments, safety
tips while traveling and emergency travel assistance, including medical aid, airport
travel support, urgent and emergency assistance, and lost or stolen personal
property insurance whether they are on business or pleasure travel or a
combination.
And at DoorDash, Chris Cherry, head of global safety and security, wrote in an
email that “while personal travel is not something we track, we have received
requests to extend our travel support capabilities to personal travel.” Mr. Cherry
said in those cases, the company has manually added employee leisure itineraries
to its travel risk management system and “provided the same level of overwatch
that we do for regular business travel.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travel-company-responsiblity.html
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4/21/24, 11:00 PM
Planning to Combine Business and Leisure Travel? You’re Not Alone. – The New York Times
The Buchmanns plan to travel this month to Barcelona, Spain, for the McDonald’s
Worldwide Convention. DoorDash will have a booth, and Mr. Buchmann will work
on the exhibit floor and also entertain clients.
Ms. Buchmann will accompany him. She plans to go sightseeing in the morning,
and work in the afternoons and evenings Barcelona time. She will also take three
days of paid time off and has shared her plans with Ms. McLaren, the RevShoppe
chief executive.
They will stay a day after the conference and plan to visit the Dalí Theater and
Museum in Figueres. “I’m sure there will be no shortage of tapas and window
shopping along way,” Mr. Buchmann said. He expects to be back at work the next
Monday.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Combining Business Trip With Vacation
Can Have Unexpected Risks
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/business/business-leisure-travel-company-responsiblity.html
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