If you feel like your team’s business trips are starting to look a lot more like vacations lately, you are definitely not imagining it: the strict division between a work trip and personal downtime has mostly faded away. Professionals are no longer just flying out for a quick Tuesday to Thursday conference and heading straight back home.

Instead, they are increasingly extending their stays to explore new cities, bringing their families along, and blending their professional responsibilities with personal downtime. This shift is turning what used to be rigid corporate itineraries into flexible, blended travel experiences that redefine how we think about working on the go.

A recent study conducted by Holafly highlights exactly how massive this movement has become. According to the 2026 Summer Travel & eSIM Report, a striking 24,9% of all planned trips this summer have a professional purpose. This is a noticeable jump from the 19,6% recorded last year, showing that business travel is growing with an entirely new look.

To support this rapidly evolving workforce, dedicated platforms like Holafly for Business provide organizations with a streamlined way to equip their global teams with reliable internet access from day one, whether they are taking a client call or exploring a new city.

Who are these new professionals and what do they look like?

This change is largely being driven by a generational handover in the workforce. The data shows that professionals aged 25 to 44 now make up two-thirds of all intended business travel, with the 25-34 age group alone driving nearly 40% of these trips. These younger professionals do not view work and personal time as two separate boxes, but rather expect their tools and their employers to support a lifestyle where both can happen at the same time, anywhere in the world.

For these young employees, bleisure is no longer just a nice travel perk to have but a non-negotiable standard for work-life integration that heavily influences whether they stay with their current employer or look elsewhere.

Geographically, this trend is unfolding rapidly across different parts of the world; workers in Asia are leading the way, where more than 30% of all planned summer travel includes a professional element, while those in Latin America follow closely with nearly a quarter of its travelers heading out for work-related purposes. These high percentages indicate that employees are actively taking advantage of company trips to enjoy a few extra days of vacation, turning standard regional meetings into culturally immersive bleisure experiences.

As this trend grows, it brings a fresh set of challenges for corporate decision-makers. It is no longer just about booking a flight and a hotel room. It is about making sure that your team has everything they need to perform at their best while sitting at a beachside cafe or a remote co-working space. The organizations that adapt to this reality early by formally embracing the bleisure model, will have a distinct advantage in keeping their top talent engaged.

The bleisure challenge of staying connected while delivering results abroad

Extending a business trip for a few days of relaxation sounds like the perfect workplace benefit, but it introduces a major challenge: the constant pressure to stay online while delivering results from a beachside cafe or a hotel lobby. When the line between work and leisure blurs, the stress of unexpected disconnection shifts from a minor annoyance to a major professional risk.

More than 86% of business travelers under the age of 55 have experienced significant stress due to internet access failure while on the move. This pressure is even more intense for global teams operating in highly demanding corporate environments. For instance, the data reveals that 92,8% of professionals from Latin America and nearly 88% from Asia report severe anxiety caused by data issues while traveling.

An overwhelming 81,3% of business travelers expect a positive impact on their productivity when their company provides an eSIM, according to Holafly’s study. In strong contrast, that confidence drops to just 52,4% for those left to manage their own access, representing a massive 28,9% point gap in pure workforce performance. Relying on physical SIM cards doesn’t solve the problem either, since only 61,2% of employees expect to stay productive with this method.

This is exactly where a centralized solution like Holafly for Business steps in to change the dynamic, giving organizations a simple way to assign eSIMs directly to their teams before they even pack their bags.

How can you secure a blended itinerary with data protection?

As work trips increasingly blend into personal vacations, the way corporate data is handled on mobile devices becomes a risk. Employees use the same phone for everything, from sending confidential company emails to booking local tours. Because these travelers often rely on unsecured Wi-Fi in public spaces like airports or cafes, keeping corporate data safe is a must.

According to Holafly’s report, secure access has officially outranked raw data speed and quick setup times, with 41,7% of travelers naming data safety as their number one priority on the road. Employees are highly aware that logging into unsecured public Wi-Fi networks puts both sensitive company assets and their own personal information at serious risk.

This focus on safety grows even stronger when employers take the lead in choosing the right tools. While security is the primary concern for 37,3% of self-managed travelers and 42,2% of those using standard company roaming, that priority surges to an incredible 52% for professionals equipped with a company-provided eSIM. When an organization steps in to handle how their team stays online, employees expect that solution to meet strict corporate safety standards, creating a strong baseline of trust.

The numbers from this year’s summer travel research point to an undeniable reality: the blended travel model is here to stay, and the companies moving fastest to equip their mobile workforces with modern digital tools are seeing immediate benefits.

For corporate decision-makers, providing a secure, private way for teams to stay online during bleisure itineraries by utilizing a solution like a Holafly for Business eSIM provides a simple yet powerful upgrade that shows companies truly value both performance and personal balance.

Methodology

To map out these shifting global trends, the research relied on a highly rigorous and direct approach. The findings are based on a primary survey of 3,048 respondents across 87 different countries, all of whom completed the questionnaire in full during May 2026.

The data analysis carefully separates real-world actions from future plans to keep the insights transparent. All year-on-year comparisons contrast the stated intentions of this summer’s traveler cohort against the confirmed, retrospective behaviors recorded at the close of last season. Furthermore, conditional routing was used throughout the questionnaire, meaning specific sub-sections such as corporate data, workplace performance expectations, and data safety priorities were answered exclusively by the active business travelers within the study, grounding the report in highly accurate and relevant peer insights.