Spears Business professor Im studies impact of flexible work arrangements on tourism industry
Monday, March 3, 2025
Media Contact: Hallie Hart | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-1050 | hallie.hart@okstate.edu
Dr. Jinyoung Im paid careful attention to the emergence of unconventional tourism trends over the past few years.
Vacation rental company Airbnb reported an increase in Monday and Tuesday bookings. Articles described a booming “afternoon fun economy” as more people flocked to country clubs for weekday rounds of golf. Airports teemed with activity not only on weekends, but also throughout the week.
Although some of these tourists were enjoying retirement or annual leave, many continued to work while traveling.
Given the rise of irregular hours, off-site locations and advanced technology, the once-distinct domains of work and vacation are increasingly intertwined. Business scholars have examined the impact of flexible work schedules on productivity and well-being, but how is flexwork changing travel and tourism? Further, how can the tourism industry adapt to better meet the needs and wants of guests in constant flux between work and travel?
Im, an assistant professor and award-winning researcher in Oklahoma State University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, posed these questions in her recent publication, “Flexwork and flextravel.”
“It’s different from the traditional angle that we used to look at tourism and work,” Im said. “We totally separated them before, but now, it is merged. People are transitioning between stages multiple times throughout the week, throughout the days, and there are very interesting phenomena as the consequences.”
A collaboration with lead author Dr. Li Miao, Dr. Fiona X. Yang and doctoral student Qiao Zhang from the University of Macau in China, Im’s article appears in Annals of Tourism Research, an A-plus journal on the Spears School of Business list.
The paper incorporates ideas rooted in sociology and anthropology.
“It’s really about understanding the people,” Im said. “They are the tourists, but they are also the workers. They are the nomads. Starting from that understanding will change how hospitality and tourism companies and destinations serve people.”
Characterized as “flexworkers” and “digital nomads” in Im’s article, these modern professionals don’t have a one-size-fits-all profile. Some travel enthusiasts work to fund their trips, while others travel as a form of work, finding lucrative careers as content creators who share their global adventures on platforms like YouTube. In other cases, employees might travel as a group, taking a corporate retreat to a beach resort for team-building and a change of scenery.
Although flexwork-flextravel encompasses a variety of lifestyles, Im has noticed common themes.
A flexworker is in a continuous state of flow, she explained. Picture a busy professional who replies to emails during breakfast at a café, shares ideas on a morning teleconference, takes an afternoon mountain hike and spends the evening finishing a corporate project in a cozy vacation cabin with minimal distractions. The next day, that same person is doing work from the airport before flying home.
Because of this constant flow, Im considers the familiar concepts of hybrid work and business trips to be inadequate descriptors of flexwork-flextravel. Instead, for further studies, she and her colleagues created a unique research framework with three key elements: temporality, which relates to how a working tourist uses and perceives time; spatiality, which refers to the spaces a working tourist occupies (including those between home and a destination); and liminality, which refers to the idea of existing between the domains of work and tourism.
Im initially took interest in this topic as she talked to friends who worked remotely during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but she extended her research beyond that time frame, realizing it would resonate with people in a variety of industries. For many professionals, a standard Monday-Friday work week capped with a weekend getaway simply doesn’t exist, whether it’s because they work on weekends, travel constantly or both.
Instead of providing different amenities for business travelers and leisure travelers, hospitality companies must realize those travelers are often one and the same, Im explained. As tourists change, Im’s research helps fellow tourism scholars – and, therefore, the tourism industry – navigate this reality.
“People are really having that liminal state between stages, between work and leisure and travel and tourism,” Im said. “That actually shapes the future of tourism research. We suggest these are the areas that we need to research more to redefine tourism and travel in the context of flexwork, but at the same time, how destination and travel and hospitality companies can accommodate those target markets.
“There’s a lot to do for us, as researchers, in how we see these phenomena and actually translate it into practical practices for those hospitality companies, tourist attractions and destinations.”