Advertisement
As more and more people cyber-commute, the boundary between home and office is blurring – and so is the boundary between work and holiday.
Way back in the last quarter of the previous century, when competition was hotting up, airlines started frequent flyer programmes to either get or retain a nice fat share of the (mostly corporate) travel market. And that’s when business travellers realised that having to fly to clients, conferences or contractors at regular intervals was not all slog. There was an upside. Finally, when they manage to sneak a week or two away from the office, they could use their accumulated air miles to take a holiday somewhere exotic.
But savvy business travellers are getting even cleverer. Rather than splurge all your leave on one air miles-sponsored extravaganza, why not take it piecemeal, and use those flights to exotic places to greater value than just collecting air miles. And thus was born the concept of bleisure travel – a blending of business and leisure.
In its most basic form, bleisure involves tagging a few days on before or after a business trip to somewhere interesting, and taking time out – even if it’s just an hour or two in the morning or evening. Of course, you don’t get to choose your destination, but with some imagination and a bit of help from Professor Google, you can find something worth doing almost anywhere.
Cape Town – oceanside awesomeness
The perfect bleisure mix would be to fly in, then take the MyCiTi bus to your hotel. I particularly like the Westin Cape Town, and not just because it is super-conveniently situated right next to the CTICC, the Waterfront and downtown. Here’s where it gets great. After a hectic day of meetings, slip on a pair of shorts and wander downstairs to take delivery of your rental SUP (stand-up paddle) board. And then quietly explore the three kilometres of canal, going past the beautiful Marina Residential Estate, and end up at Battery Park, where you can have coffee, a meal or a nice cold craft beer. And then paddle or walk back to your hotel. If you have enough time, you can extend the excursion all the way to Sea Point either on foot or by rental bike – all along the seafront with great public art, good coffee shops and awesome views like only Cape Town can supply. You can even include a dive in the I&J Ocean Exhibit at the Two Oceans Aquarium, where you can swim with the sharks and watch the people on the other side of the glass.
Advertisement
If supping sounds like too much hard work, you can take the scenic water taxi. This is a great trip on your own, but chances are you won’t have too much trouble persuading someone you love to fly in to join you for a day or two. If you push in to a weekend, have brunch at the Oranjezicht City Farm Market on Saturday morning, and if you’re in Cape Town at the beginning of the month, try to include a First Thursdays night-time trawl of the best downtown art galleries, studios, and music and food venues.
Durban – field of dreams
If you need to go to meetings in the city, it’s best to find a hotel along the Golden Mile overlooking the ocean. That way, when you have some free time, you can – literally – stroll across the road and you’re on the beach. Many hotels, like the Elangeni, for example, have rental bicycles, so you can pedal all the way along the promenade watching the surfers heading out to sea, and the whole parade of life that is Durban beachfront. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can learn to surf, SUP or kayak, or you can head down to uShaka Marine World to look at the fishies big and small.
But what sets Durban apart from almost every other city in South Africa is that it is the only one to have any lasting positive legacy from the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. While all the other stadiums in the country are considered to be at best okay, and at worst a moneysucking eyesore, Durban’s delicate picnic basket-shaped Moses Mabhida Stadium is both beautiful and economically sustainable. Take a SkyCar tour for a bird’s-eye view of Durban or, if you’re feeling energetic, do a walking tour. And, if you’re feeling adventurous, do a bungee jump or big swing. Or do them all. You can organise trips and/or shuttles direct from your hotel.
If you plan your business trip for a Friday, you can get clever. It shouldn’t be hard to persuade your significant other to fly down on Friday night, and you can move into one of the lovely oceanfront hotels on the North Coast for a seriously chilled weekend. It’s a super-quick shuttle back to the airport from there, so you could leave on Monday morning and be back in the office at nine.
Joburg – one incredible thing before breakfast
One of the best things about going to Joburg on business is that you probably won’t need to rent a car. The Gautrain will get you right into Sandton, and you can probably walk – or definitely Uber – to wherever you have to go. And then, if you want to do something incredible before breakfast – either on your own, with a significant other, or even with a client or colleague – Bill Harrop’s Original Balloon Safaris will pick you up long before the sparrows emerge from REM sleep, and whisk you off to the Magaliesberg where you can clutch a warm cup of something while you watch the balloons being inflated, and then float off into the dawn. Upon landing, you’ll be fed a sumptuous breakfast – but best you pass up on the bubbly if you’re planning on working. They’ll get you back to Sandton by about 11:00 so, after a quick change into a business suit and high heels, you could be at your first meeting before 12:00. Or – hey – get to know Jozi – there’s a lot more to this city than the Northern Suburbs and Midrand. Do a walking tour of central Joburg, visit your ancestors at the Origins Centre at Wits, go bird-watching in Soweto, do an art tour of Alexandra, or watch the fabulous Lipizzaner stallions perform in a tradition that goes back to the 16th century in Europe – and is the only recognised one of its kind outside of Austria.
All work, all play, all at sea
Taking some time out from a planned business trip is a really good idea, but sometimes you have to be proactive about your leisure time – especially if you have a family that wants a ‘real’ holiday. In cases like this, you need a ‘work-cation’. Basically, it’s taking the concepts of cyber-commuting, flexitime and bleisure to their logical extreme. Plan a trip with the family, ensure that you have good comms, and then strictly structure your days so that you have time allocated for work, time allocated for play, and time allocated for staring at the horizon – with or without a long, cold drink in your hand.
There are lots of great places you can do this, but one of the better ones is on a cruise ship. There’s something so otherworldly about being at sea. And there’s so much to do that the rest of the family won’t begrudge you your dedicated few hours of work time. You can plan your day to have family time, me time, work time, couples time and even contemplating-your-navel time. You can work for a few hours every morning, or plan to do all your work while you are at sea, and then join the family for excursions when you’re in port. Or whatever combination works for you.
All cruise liners have Wi-Fi but not all cruise liners are equal. Some are fine for checking emails and doing the odd web search but no more, and some charge an arm and a leg for data, but there are some with uncapped super-speed Wi-Fi with – seriously – dedicated satellites virtually following the ship (or it might be the other way round). Anyhow, the bottom line is that – if you choose the right ship – you can have enough rock-steady comms for high-level coding or processing of immense amounts of virtual data. Check carefully with your Lifestyle Cruises agent when booking, and make your needs known so that you don’t end up data-deprived.
