As for business travel, Southwest saw it start to rise, decline in July and August, then resume growing in September. Andrew Watterson, chief operating officer, said, “After every recession, business travel demand changes, behavior changes a little bit. So we should expect this time for it to change as well.”
“That does tend to dampen some level of seasonality, but you're still going to have that seasonality,” he said. “It's a welcome development, [but] but they're still going to have peak season and off-peak season.”According to Wikipedia, “the term bleisure was first published in 2009 by the Future Laboratory as part of their biannual Trend Briefing written by writer Jacob Strand, then a future forecaster working for The Future Laboratory, and journalist and futurologist Miriam Rayman.
There, he noted that airlines have long divided passengers into two categories, business and leisure, leading the carriers to bifurcate strategies for pricing, seating and schedules. But during the pandemic, he said, the distinctions became blurred. “Business and leisure is itself a nomenclature thing,” he said.
Historically, a business flyer might take an early New York-Chicago flight for a meeting and fly back the same night with only carry-on baggage, he said. A “leisure” passenger has been someone who flies to Orlando with a spouse and children and checks luggage.
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