At Career Gappers we are running an exciting campaign to revive tourism by tapping into the huge new market of remote workers. As the world’s borders reopen, but offices stay closed, millions of people have new flexibility to work from anywhere. This creates an opportunity for destinations to welcome tourists looking for a new kind of travel experience: a ‘workation’ (also sometimes spelled ‘workcation’).

Background: remote working is here to stay

The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for tourism in Europe. However, every crisis also brings about opportunities. The mass closure of offices has created a situation in which many millions of people have new flexibility to work remotely. In the UK, the number of people working from home reached 49% of the workforce in June 2020. And there is little reason to think that this trend will disappear after the pandemic.

Remote working was already on the rise before 2020/21, and the pandemic has been an accelerating force for it. Businesses have made huge investments to facilitate remote working in order to continue operating through the global health crisis. And if their employees are seen to be more effective when working from home, there is unlikely to be a big rush to reopen expensive office spaces after restrictions are lifted.

Global Workforce Analytics has estimated that 25–30% of the workforce will be working from home multiple days of the week by the end of 2021. This could mean great things for wellness and work–life balance, with long commutes becoming a thing of the past. It also means that many more people will be able to work from anywhere they choose, whether that is a home office, a city coffee shop or a sunny beach resort. Enter the workation.

What exactly is a workation?

A workation is simply a vacation or holiday that involves working while you are there. It is typically a short break, around 1–2 weeks, combining a few days of working with using downtime to explore the destination.

Workationers are not entirely location-dependent; they have a permanent ‘home’, and so they are different from digital nomads, who continuously travel and work. However, destinations that are set up for digital nomads are usually suitable for workations too, as they have a good infrastructure of co-working spaces, suitable accommodation options and strong wifi connections.

Our workations campaign in 2023

Career Gappers was originally created to inspire and help people to take travel career breaks. As you can read in our media kit, we have reached a powerful audience:

  • 30k monthly page views to our blog website
  • 5,000+ followers across our social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
  • 2,000 email subscribers
  • Our primary audience is professionals aged 25–40
  • By location, our top two audience countries are the UK and the USA 

The idea of taking a workation has a natural appeal to our audience. Career break travellers are career-driven and ambitious, but also adventurous, eager to explore the world, in search of a healthy work–life balance, and with disposable income to realise this lifestyle. These are all characteristics that fit with taking regular workations: combining work with play, and harnessing a new way to travel more regularly.

Since launching the campaign, we have:

As international travel continues to recover from the pandemic, we will grow the campaign. Our focus in 2023 will be:

  • Partner with ideal workation destinations in Europe to visit
  • Research and gather content to create workation destination guides, showcasing accommodation and workspaces
  • Recommend itineraries for exploring the selected destinations while on a workation
  • Build targeted email lists to continue promoting the selected destinations to our audience beyond 2023

Digital nomad city mountains

If you are interested in getting involved in our workations campaign in 2023, for example as a featured destination, please get in touch on alex@careergappers.com.