Indian professionals not averse to combining work with play: TripAdvisor survey

29th June 2013
Indian professionals not averse to combining work with play: TripAdvisor survey

Bangalore, June 30, 2013 – A survey by the world’s largest travel site, TripAdvisor, found Indian professionals prone to mixing business with pleasure while travelling, combining work with holidays. 69% respondents said they extend their business trips for personal travel sometimes and 82% check mails and 94% take or make work calls on holiday. Of these, while 61% check their e-mails daily, 15% are constantly checking their inbox.” The survey was conducted among actively employed professionals of whom over 75% travel often or occasionally for work. These respondents include a large sample of frequent travellers (30% undertook 3-5 domestic business trips in the last 6 months and 41% took at least 1-2 international business trips in the past 6 months.) Over 50% respondents were professionals with 6-15 years of work experience and 21% were senior professionals with work experience between 16-25 years.
While business trip schedules are choked with meetings, conferences, market visits and playing catch up with work mail on Smartphones , the survey finds that the top 3 things that people still try and find time for are :
- Try/eat out at popular restaurants in the city (78%)
- Visit some local tourist spots (75%)
- Catch up with a friend in that city (66%)
Interestingly, family loving Indians seem to prefer catching up with a friend in the city compared to meeting relatives which featured lowest among other options!

Further strengthening this trend, the survey finds 94% respondents make/ take work related calls while on holiday out of which 23% make/take calls often or always, while one-third decide on taking/making calls depending on who is calling them.
Smartphone is the device of choice for a majority of 62% respondents to manage work on holiday, followed closely by the traditional laptop at 59%. Tablet adoption seems to be catching up with 22% using it for remote work management.

57% respondents said that they used airline miles collected on business trips for their personal travel.50% respondents indicated that they use hotel reward points collected on business trips for their personal travel.This could be a result of seemingly liberal company policies as 67% respondents confirmed that their organisation does not prohibit employees from using airline miles or hotel points accumulated from business trips for personal use.
TripAdvisor
is the world's largest travel site. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors**, and over 100 million reviews and opinions covering more than 2.5 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions www.tripadvisor.in