The business travel experience Orit Unger, Natan Uriely, Galia Fuchs ⇑ Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel article info Article history: Received 27 June 2015 Revised 17 August 2016 Accepted 1 October 2016 Coordinating Editor: Greg Richards Keywords: Business travel Tourist experience abstract The study explores the business travel experience as a framework of time with four phases: trip preparations, passenger experience, destination experience and homecoming. In-depth interviews with frequent business travelers indicate that their experience as pas- sengers includes ‘‘moments of relaxation” and is perceived as a sort of ‘‘time off”, in which they enjoy their familiarity with airports, the comforts provided to privileged passengers and the limited connectivity during flights. The other phases of the trip are devoted mainly to work-obligations and shape the nature of the trip as pri- marily a vocational experience. These findings add insight to mobility research of tourism, conceptualizations of the nexus between work and tourism, and the literature on business travelers. Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The decreasing distinctiveness of the tourist experience with respect to everyday-life experiences has been conceptualized by various terms, including the ‘‘end of tourism” (Gale, 2009; Hannam, 2009; Lash & Urry, 1994), ‘‘de-differentiation of tourism” (Urry, 1990) and ‘‘de-exoticizing of tourist travel” (Larsen, 2008). In line with this postmodernist approach of deconstruction in tourism scholarship, the ‘‘mobilities” paradigm highlights hybrid types of travel, in which key features of the tourist experi- ence, such as recreation, sight-seeing and pleasure, are combined with conventional everyday-life experiences, including family obligations, work requirements, religious practices and ideological com- mitments (Belhassen, Uriely, & Assor, 2014; Cohen & Cohen, 2012, 2015; Larsen, Urry, & Axhausen, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2016.10.003 0160-7383/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: unger.orit@gmail.com (O. Unger), urielyn@som.bgu.ac.il (N. Uriely), galiaf@som.bgu.ac.il (G. Fuchs). Annals of Tourism Research 61 (2016) 142–156 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Annals of Tourism Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures