[Viewpoint] The Era of Workation and Experience

Professor Yonggu Seo, Sookmyung Women’s University Graduate School of Business

Workation is a new lifestyle that combines work and vacation, allowing people to work for several days or months while staying at a resort. It has long been a popular work style among companies in Silicon Valley, USA. About a five-hour drive from Silicon Valley lies the world-famous Lake Tahoe, where many people enjoy both work and vacation simultaneously.

Workation, a Silicon Valley corporate culture where people work one day and enjoy skiing or hiking the next, has evolved into a future-oriented work culture in Korea as remote work became widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiments such as Hanwha Life’s office space at Breed Hotel in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, where employees can work for 1 to 4 weeks, and CJ ENM’s base office in Woljeong-ri, Jeju, allowing work for up to 4 weeks, have been reported as successful. The reasons why workation is expected to become a continuously expanding lifestyle rather than a temporary trend are as follows.

First, in the era of social distancing (with COVID-19), it was realized that remote work does not reduce productivity, and recently, more companies are adopting a four-day workweek. As working hours continue to shorten and remote work via video calls and Zoom meetings becomes more active, remote work for about 1 to 4 weeks is being actively accepted both technically and culturally. Combining vacation and non-working days makes it easy to secure remote work periods.

Second, the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z), who prioritize work-life balance (WLB), has massively entered the labor market and become the core workforce of companies, creating an environment where management must significantly embrace the values and aspirations they pursue. If compensation and working conditions are equal, companies offering workation programs will definitely be chosen by the MZ generation. As more young workers want to work for two weeks in Jeju or Yangyang while enjoying surfing and trekking, workation is likely to become the new normal.

Third, the economic paradigm is shifting from ownership to experience. Changes are accelerating, and information and content are being supplied without limits. However, income growth in most labor markets is limited. While desires have grown, ownership of goods and services like in the past has become impossible, and experience has begun to replace ownership. As the experience economy grows, new experiences are being created through the blurring of existing experiences.

In the past, travel experiences were divided into business trips and vacation trips. But now, business travel and leisure travel have merged to create the experience called “bleisure.” Bleisure is a compound word of business and leisure activities. It refers to traveling to a vacation spot while also working. This so-called hybrid travel involves carrying a laptop to the destination. The “athleisure” fashion, which mixes sportswear and everyday clothing, is also a blur phenomenon. It reflects how the general public has accepted sports as part of daily life, turning leggings and training suits into everyday wear. Workation, where the boundary between work and vacation disappears, and the era of experience have brought new growth opportunities to local resort cities and service companies.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.