Remote Work Business Travel Changes: What Employers Need to Plan For in 2026
Remote and hybrid work changed who travels and why. Instead of everyone living near the office and flying out for the occasional client visit, you now have people scattered across cities and countries who fly in for team time. You also have more employees asking to blend work and personal time when they travel.
From an operations point of view, two situations create most of the complexity:
- Remote employees visiting your offices or hubs.
- Employees asking to extend trips or work from another city for a short stretch.
If you design your travel program with these two in mind, most other questions get easier to handle.
Remote Employees Visiting the Office or Hubs
Remote employees still need time in the same room as their teams and leaders. The difference is that “coming into the office” now means booking trips, not just showing up in the morning.
A good place to start is to decide which locations count as hubs. For most companies, that’s the main headquarters plus a few key regional offices. Once you know your hubs, you can set rough expectations for how often different groups come in. You don’t need a hard rule, but stating something like “remote staff in the same country should plan to visit their primary hub a few times a year for planned team weeks or offsites” gives people a clear baseline.
It also helps to be clear about what the company will pay for. Many organizations cover travel to the hub, a hotel for the official on‑site days, and local transport between the airport, hotel, and office. If someone wants to arrive early or stay longer for personal reasons, those extra days are fine as long as they’re paid for separately. Writing that down, both in your travel policy and your remote work guidelines, prevents a lot of one‑off debates later.
Hotel choices around hubs are another area where you can make life easier. Pick a small set of hotels within a reasonable walk or short ride of each office. Check that they have reliable Wi‑Fi and rooms where someone could work comfortably for a day. Jot down typical rates and simple notes like “10 minutes’ walk to the office” or “quiet lobby with tables for laptops.” Share those lists internally so remote staff aren’t guessing every time they book.
Finally, give people a sense of what a “typical” visit looks like. For example, you might say that most hub visits are two or three nights, with an extra night allowed when flights make that necessary. You can always make exceptions, but having a default pattern helps managers and finance stay aligned.
Bleisure and Short “Work From Another City” Trips
More employees are now comfortable asking, “Can I stay through the weekend?” or “Can I work from another city for a week after this client visit?” You don’t have to say yes to all of it, but you do need a simple way to respond.
For bleisure, a short framework usually covers most cases. Think in two parts: the business trip and any personal extension. The company pays for the itinerary and hotel nights that would have been needed for the business purpose alone. If adding personal days changes the fare or adds extra nights, the employee pays that difference. To keep things simple, ask travelers to grab a screenshot or quote of the business‑only option on the day they book and compare it to their chosen dates.
You should also explain how responsibility works. During days when someone is traveling or staying somewhere for work, your duty of care and any company protections apply. When they add purely personal days on either side, they’re traveling on their own time. Being direct about this in your policy avoids awkward questions later.
Longer stays in one city are where extended‑stay and aparthotel options start to make sense. If someone will be in one place for a week or more—whether that’s for a longer hub visit, a project, or a mix of meetings and remote work—a regular business hotel can feel cramped and inefficient. Extended‑stay properties often offer small kitchens, more space, and rooms that are set up for working as well as sleeping. In some cities, weekly or long‑stay pricing can also be competitive with standard nightly rates, especially if travelers cook some meals themselves. You can support that by saying, for example, “For stays of more than X nights in one city, consider extended‑stay or aparthotel options,” and by including at least one of those near each major office on your preferred hotel list.
Short “work from another city” stints are a bit different. Here it helps to give managers a simple set of questions rather than a yes/no rule. For example: Will the person still have enough time‑zone overlap with their team and customers? Are there any known legal, tax, or security concerns with the location? Is there a clear work reason for being there, such as being closer to a customer or overlapping with a hub visit, or is this mainly personal preference? You might decide that short domestic arrangements of up to a few weeks can be approved at the manager level, while longer or cross‑border stays should be reviewed with HR and legal.
Making Sure People Can Work Effectively on Trips
When employees travel in a hybrid setup, they’re rarely “off‑line” for the whole trip. They still have regular meetings, messages, and project work to get through. That means you should think about where and how they’ll work, not just where they’ll sleep.
When you build your preferred hotel lists, look at them through that lens. Ask a simple question: could someone comfortably work from this room for a full day if they needed to? A decent desk, a chair that isn’t an afterthought, a couple of accessible outlets, and Wi‑Fi that holds up on video calls matter more than decorative touches. It’s also useful if there’s at least one quiet spot outside the room—a corner of the lobby, a lounge, or a small business center—where someone can take a call or sit with a laptop for an hour without feeling out of place.
There will still be trips where hotel setups aren’t enough, or where the schedule is heavy enough that people need a more structured environment. In those cases, coworking spaces can help. You don’t need a big formal program, but you can decide that day passes are reimbursable when someone is on a multi‑day trip with lots of meetings, or when local conditions make it hard to work from their room. A short line in your policy, such as “Coworking day passes can be expensed when needed for full workdays away from the office, with manager approval,” plus a reasonable daily cap, gives people guidance without overcomplicating things.
If your teams travel back to the same few cities repeatedly, you might also keep an internal list of coworking spaces that have worked well in those places. That way managers and travelers have somewhere to start instead of searching from scratch.
Policy, Compliance, and Internal Alignment
Remote‑driven travel patterns touch more than the travel team. They connect to your remote work rules, your legal and tax posture, and your security expectations. Making sure those parts line up will save a lot of rework later.
It’s helpful to read your remote work policy and travel policy together. If your remote policy says “working from another country requires approval,” your travel policy should not quietly assume long overseas stays are fine. If you expect remote employees to come into hubs a certain number of times a year, that expectation should appear in both places so there’s no conflict.
You can also reduce ambiguity by defining a few terms in plain language. Spell out what you mean by a hub visit, what counts as bleisure, and what you consider a temporary “work from another city” arrangement. For each, note how it gets approved and what the company pays for. That clarity helps employees, managers, and the travel team talk about the same thing when they use those words.
For longer or cross‑border stays, it’s worth adding a light review step. HR, legal, tax, and security can quickly check for common issues: whether a pattern of stays might create tax nexus or permanent establishment questions, whether there are labor or immigration constraints, and whether handling your data from that location meets your security standards. This doesn’t have to be heavy—often a short intake form and an email thread is enough—but it should exist before you normalize “work from abroad” arrangements.
Steps to Bring Your Program in Line With Remote Work
You don’t have to fix everything at once. A simple way to move forward is to start with what’s already happening, then make small, clear changes.
Look at your travel from the last year and roughly categorize each trip. Which ones were staff coming into hubs? Which were client or conference trips? How many involved stays longer than four or five nights? Where did people ask if they could extend trips or work from another city, and how did you handle those?
Use that picture to tune the basics. Name your hubs and outline how often different groups are expected to visit. Publish a short, practical list of hotels around each hub. Add a short bleisure section to your policy that explains how to split business and personal costs and where company responsibility starts and ends. Call out that extended‑stay options are appropriate once trips cross a certain length, and make sure your booking tools show those properties.
Then tackle workspace and approvals. Say a few plain things about the kind of hotel work setup you expect. Explain when coworking is an acceptable expense and how to get it approved. Give managers a handful of questions to ask before they sign off on “work from another city” requests, and show a couple of examples so they can see how you’d like it applied.
After that, plan to check in on your changes once or twice a year. As you see new patterns—more hub visits, more long stays in certain cities, or more cross‑border requests—you can tweak visit frequency, trip‑length thresholds, and workspace guidance without starting from scratch.
How Dyme Can Help You Put This Into Practice
Clear policies are the first step. The second is having tools that reflect those policies in day‑to‑day bookings.
Dyme can help by making it easy to book extended‑stay hotels and aparthotels alongside standard business hotels, especially near your hubs and in cities your teams visit often. It can highlight properties that have strong internet and decent work setups, which matters when remote employees are coming in for team weeks or working from another city for a short period.
Dyme also gives you a clearer view of who is traveling, where they are going, and how long they’re staying. You can use that information to refine hub visit expectations, adjust budgets, and spot trends early. Because Dyme reinvests its profits into clean energy projects like solar installations for schools and hospitals, your travel budget also supports broader sustainability goals that many employees care about.
Put together, thoughtful policies and the right tooling let you support how people actually work today—without losing track of cost, risk, or the employee experience.
Table of Contents
Remote Work Business Travel Changes: What Employers Need to Plan For in 2026
Remote and hybrid work changed who travels and why. Instead of everyone living near the office and flying out for the occasional client visit, you now have people scattered across cities and countries who fly in for team time. You also have more employees asking to blend work and personal time when they travel.
From an operations point of view, two situations create most of the complexity:
- Remote employees visiting your offices or hubs.
- Employees asking to extend trips or work from another city for a short stretch.
If you design your travel program with these two in mind, most other questions get easier to handle.
Remote Employees Visiting the Office or Hubs
Remote employees still need time in the same room as their teams and leaders. The difference is that “coming into the office” now means booking trips, not just showing up in the morning.
A good place to start is to decide which locations count as hubs. For most companies, that’s the main headquarters plus a few key regional offices. Once you know your hubs, you can set rough expectations for how often different groups come in. You don’t need a hard rule, but stating something like “remote staff in the same country should plan to visit their primary hub a few times a year for planned team weeks or offsites” gives people a clear baseline.
It also helps to be clear about what the company will pay for. Many organizations cover travel to the hub, a hotel for the official on‑site days, and local transport between the airport, hotel, and office. If someone wants to arrive early or stay longer for personal reasons, those extra days are fine as long as they’re paid for separately. Writing that down, both in your travel policy and your remote work guidelines, prevents a lot of one‑off debates later.
Hotel choices around hubs are another area where you can make life easier. Pick a small set of hotels within a reasonable walk or short ride of each office. Check that they have reliable Wi‑Fi and rooms where someone could work comfortably for a day. Jot down typical rates and simple notes like “10 minutes’ walk to the office” or “quiet lobby with tables for laptops.” Share those lists internally so remote staff aren’t guessing every time they book.
Finally, give people a sense of what a “typical” visit looks like. For example, you might say that most hub visits are two or three nights, with an extra night allowed when flights make that necessary. You can always make exceptions, but having a default pattern helps managers and finance stay aligned.
Bleisure and Short “Work From Another City” Trips
More employees are now comfortable asking, “Can I stay through the weekend?” or “Can I work from another city for a week after this client visit?” You don’t have to say yes to all of it, but you do need a simple way to respond.
For bleisure, a short framework usually covers most cases. Think in two parts: the business trip and any personal extension. The company pays for the itinerary and hotel nights that would have been needed for the business purpose alone. If adding personal days changes the fare or adds extra nights, the employee pays that difference. To keep things simple, ask travelers to grab a screenshot or quote of the business‑only option on the day they book and compare it to their chosen dates.
You should also explain how responsibility works. During days when someone is traveling or staying somewhere for work, your duty of care and any company protections apply. When they add purely personal days on either side, they’re traveling on their own time. Being direct about this in your policy avoids awkward questions later.
Longer stays in one city are where extended‑stay and aparthotel options start to make sense. If someone will be in one place for a week or more—whether that’s for a longer hub visit, a project, or a mix of meetings and remote work—a regular business hotel can feel cramped and inefficient. Extended‑stay properties often offer small kitchens, more space, and rooms that are set up for working as well as sleeping. In some cities, weekly or long‑stay pricing can also be competitive with standard nightly rates, especially if travelers cook some meals themselves. You can support that by saying, for example, “For stays of more than X nights in one city, consider extended‑stay or aparthotel options,” and by including at least one of those near each major office on your preferred hotel list.
Short “work from another city” stints are a bit different. Here it helps to give managers a simple set of questions rather than a yes/no rule. For example: Will the person still have enough time‑zone overlap with their team and customers? Are there any known legal, tax, or security concerns with the location? Is there a clear work reason for being there, such as being closer to a customer or overlapping with a hub visit, or is this mainly personal preference? You might decide that short domestic arrangements of up to a few weeks can be approved at the manager level, while longer or cross‑border stays should be reviewed with HR and legal.
Making Sure People Can Work Effectively on Trips
When employees travel in a hybrid setup, they’re rarely “off‑line” for the whole trip. They still have regular meetings, messages, and project work to get through. That means you should think about where and how they’ll work, not just where they’ll sleep.
When you build your preferred hotel lists, look at them through that lens. Ask a simple question: could someone comfortably work from this room for a full day if they needed to? A decent desk, a chair that isn’t an afterthought, a couple of accessible outlets, and Wi‑Fi that holds up on video calls matter more than decorative touches. It’s also useful if there’s at least one quiet spot outside the room—a corner of the lobby, a lounge, or a small business center—where someone can take a call or sit with a laptop for an hour without feeling out of place.
There will still be trips where hotel setups aren’t enough, or where the schedule is heavy enough that people need a more structured environment. In those cases, coworking spaces can help. You don’t need a big formal program, but you can decide that day passes are reimbursable when someone is on a multi‑day trip with lots of meetings, or when local conditions make it hard to work from their room. A short line in your policy, such as “Coworking day passes can be expensed when needed for full workdays away from the office, with manager approval,” plus a reasonable daily cap, gives people guidance without overcomplicating things.
If your teams travel back to the same few cities repeatedly, you might also keep an internal list of coworking spaces that have worked well in those places. That way managers and travelers have somewhere to start instead of searching from scratch.
Policy, Compliance, and Internal Alignment
Remote‑driven travel patterns touch more than the travel team. They connect to your remote work rules, your legal and tax posture, and your security expectations. Making sure those parts line up will save a lot of rework later.
It’s helpful to read your remote work policy and travel policy together. If your remote policy says “working from another country requires approval,” your travel policy should not quietly assume long overseas stays are fine. If you expect remote employees to come into hubs a certain number of times a year, that expectation should appear in both places so there’s no conflict.
You can also reduce ambiguity by defining a few terms in plain language. Spell out what you mean by a hub visit, what counts as bleisure, and what you consider a temporary “work from another city” arrangement. For each, note how it gets approved and what the company pays for. That clarity helps employees, managers, and the travel team talk about the same thing when they use those words.
For longer or cross‑border stays, it’s worth adding a light review step. HR, legal, tax, and security can quickly check for common issues: whether a pattern of stays might create tax nexus or permanent establishment questions, whether there are labor or immigration constraints, and whether handling your data from that location meets your security standards. This doesn’t have to be heavy—often a short intake form and an email thread is enough—but it should exist before you normalize “work from abroad” arrangements.
Steps to Bring Your Program in Line With Remote Work
You don’t have to fix everything at once. A simple way to move forward is to start with what’s already happening, then make small, clear changes.
Look at your travel from the last year and roughly categorize each trip. Which ones were staff coming into hubs? Which were client or conference trips? How many involved stays longer than four or five nights? Where did people ask if they could extend trips or work from another city, and how did you handle those?
Use that picture to tune the basics. Name your hubs and outline how often different groups are expected to visit. Publish a short, practical list of hotels around each hub. Add a short bleisure section to your policy that explains how to split business and personal costs and where company responsibility starts and ends. Call out that extended‑stay options are appropriate once trips cross a certain length, and make sure your booking tools show those properties.
Then tackle workspace and approvals. Say a few plain things about the kind of hotel work setup you expect. Explain when coworking is an acceptable expense and how to get it approved. Give managers a handful of questions to ask before they sign off on “work from another city” requests, and show a couple of examples so they can see how you’d like it applied.
After that, plan to check in on your changes once or twice a year. As you see new patterns—more hub visits, more long stays in certain cities, or more cross‑border requests—you can tweak visit frequency, trip‑length thresholds, and workspace guidance without starting from scratch.
How Dyme Can Help You Put This Into Practice
Clear policies are the first step. The second is having tools that reflect those policies in day‑to‑day bookings.
Dyme can help by making it easy to book extended‑stay hotels and aparthotels alongside standard business hotels, especially near your hubs and in cities your teams visit often. It can highlight properties that have strong internet and decent work setups, which matters when remote employees are coming in for team weeks or working from another city for a short period.
Dyme also gives you a clearer view of who is traveling, where they are going, and how long they’re staying. You can use that information to refine hub visit expectations, adjust budgets, and spot trends early. Because Dyme reinvests its profits into clean energy projects like solar installations for schools and hospitals, your travel budget also supports broader sustainability goals that many employees care about.
Put together, thoughtful policies and the right tooling let you support how people actually work today—without losing track of cost, risk, or the employee experience.
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