Red-eye flights, presenteeism and retention

At first, out‑of‑town work trips might have felt like a promotion. You represented the company, were sent to “make things happen”, flew Premium Economy, stayed in a fashionable hotel, networked and hopefully, secured new business.

But after some time, red-eyes, quick turnarounds and other travel pressures started wearing thin. So, you begin checking out mentally. You wonder why this could not have been a Teams call. You also wonder why every “quick” trip requires intense preparation, domestic juggling and days of unscheduled recovery time. Red-eye flights quickly lose their glamour in this reality.

It all feels like it is not on company time. It feels like it is all on you. That is because much of it is. Business travel has a tax, and your staff pay the heaviest price.

The fatigue isn’t imaginary

Tourism management expert Professor Anneli Douglas from the University of Pretoria describes business travel as a double-edged sword. She links travel stress to “presenteeism”, which means being physically present but mentally absent.

An earlier Stats SA estimate shows presenteeism costs the economy R89 billion a year. Douglas’s research among 400 business travellers found that about 2.3 days are lost to presenteeism each month due to business-travel stress. This stress drains capacity, output and judgement.

A recent burnout report from Mental Health UK shows 79% of professionals report significant burnout symptoms. Frequent travellers face a high risk of stress-related absence. Research linked to the International SOS Foundation shows business trips contribute to behavioural changes. About 45% of travellers report increased anxiety and emotional exhaustion. This does not only happen on the road.

Douglas says stress peaks before the trip. Travellers manage home life, work cover and admin before departure, and that pressure follows them. This pressure is often worse for travellers from the Global South. They also face distance, long-haul journeys, safety concerns and disruption. Red-eye flights intensify these challenges. Once travellers return, they encounter back-to-back meetings and time spent catching up at night. Over time, this pattern develops into burnout.

It is not just the formal workload

Studies on the division of labour and domestic mental load show that coordinating childcare, school runs and household security from a different time zone drains parents.

Add general day-to-day expectations, such as maintaining normal inboxes and outputs while travelling, and travellers effectively do two jobs at once. Business travel fatigue is not a personal gripe. It is a management issue. It affects how people think, decide and represent the business away from home.

Organisations are changing tack. They are much more deliberate about building resilience now. Where possible, clients are avoiding red-eyes and back-to-back meetings. They add time to reset because they have seen what exhausted travel does to performance, outcomes and especially to people. Red-eye flights now feature prominently in these risk assessments.

When a reset day becomes company policy

Combining business travel with downtime used to mean “make it a weekend, if you can”. In practice, most travellers cannot do this. They have a life outside work and limited leave.

The new approach is different. It treats recovery as part of the itinerary. Deloitte’s 2025 Corporate Travel Study notes a sharp shift from pure cost control towards “traveller experience” to improve performance and retention. Multinationals like Citigroup now experiment with structured “reset” periods and company-wide breaks to combat an always-on culture.

Practically, that can mean:

• Mandatory landing buffers for long-haul flights, for example, a 24-hour reset before the first face-to-face engagement.
• A shift towards wellness-oriented accommodation and lifestyle hotels that support sleep, recovery and digital detox zones, instead of treating the hotel purely as a bed near the venue.
• Family-support measures such as cleaning or meal-delivery vouchers to ease the domestic load during heavy travel cycles.

There is also a duty-of-care dimension. Industry bodies like the Global Business Travel Association say wellbeing belongs inside duty of care and risk management. Mental and physical health affect safety, behaviour and work performance on the road. If risk management only covers disruptions and physical security, it misses risks associated with fatigue and stress. These include impaired judgement, reduced concentration and knock-on effects on productivity.

For me, a reset day, when done properly, means designing travel so people can do the work they travelled to do. It also ensures companies get full value from every trip.

How to build this in without inflating costs

My answer is to design travel more selectively. Reset time is not required for every domestic business trip. However, it should be reserved for longer trips that affect performance. These include overnight flights, multi-city schedules and trips that require critical engagement immediately upon arrival. In such cases, a buffer is often cheaper than the risk of diminished output and strained client outcomes. Red-eye flights often fall into this high-impact category.

Connectivity is part of the problem. Laptops, Wi-Fi and mobile tools mean work does not pause in transit. It follows travellers through airports, taxis and hotel rooms, increasing pressure. Nearly half of corporate customers expect to increase travel budgets in the coming year. This raises the stakes for getting real value from each trip.

It’s not difficult to accommodate a traveller’s needs. You can widen property selection, update profiles with preferred travel times, and allow for a bit of wiggle room in the schedule. Ultimately, companies that recognise this shift protect judgment, relationships and retention.