In the new world of work, there’s a new type of employee: The business-leisure traveler.
It’s the latest attempt to find a happy medium between working arrangements like Airbnb Inc.’s — where staff can work anywhere, anytime — and those at companies like Tesla Inc., whose chief executive officer Elon Musk tweeted that unless employees turn up in the office, “we will assume you have resigned.”
Business-leisure travelers are a subset of digital nomads, living and working abroad for longer than a typical holiday without taking up permanent residence. They usually spend weeks or months overseas before returning home, while other nomads may spend years on the road.
David Abraham realized there was a market for this type of ultra-remote working while at his laptop in a Tokyo Starbucks. When he noticed the customers around him were working too, he asked himself “why couldn’t they be in an amazing place like Bali?” Abraham now runs Outpost, a company that provides temporary living-working spaces in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Employees’ growing enthusiasm for business-leisure travel is slowly being met with policy momentum. Governments are trying to work out visa and tax regulations while businesses fret about compliance and corporate culture.
Officials in tourism hotspots Thailand and Indonesia see the longer-term travel trend working in their favor — if everyone can get the rules right.
On the Indonesian island of Bukabuka, a four-hour-plus journey by airplane and boat from the capital city of Jakarta, eco resort Reconnect is seeing a surge in inquiries from foreigners. Now that borders have reopened, overseas visitors with plans to work remotely are booking sojourns of anywhere between a month and half a year.
The resort features large communal spaces and work stations, ready to accommodate the new cohort of business-leisure travelers. Most days, the Internet is stable enough too.
“But the main selling point is really the island itself,” said Reconnect founder Thomas Despin. Between Zoom meetings, guests can go snorkeling, learn the local art of spearfishing, and even enjoy a barbecue in the middle of the sea.
There is one drawback: “Potential guests ask us, how legal is it for me to come and stay and work?” Despin said. “At the moment, we don’t have a specific answer.”
Under Indonesian law, anyone who stays in the country for 183 days in a 12-month period is legally considered a tax resident. But paying taxes requires a work permit commonly referred to as a KITAS, which isn’t available to those traveling on a tourist visa. That leaves some would-be business-leisure travelers in a legal gray area.
In April 2021, Indonesia floated the idea of a special five-year visa exempting remote workers from paying local taxes if they don’t earn an income domestically. But there’s no timeline as yet.
“You don’t want to just be hoping for the best when it comes to your visa status,” said Despin. “You want to know what the rules are.” Colleagues of his have left Indonesia for Mexico, Portugal and neighboring Thailand, where immigration and tax laws are more supportive and clearer.
Since 2019, more than two dozen countries have introduced “digital nomad” schemes that allow people to live and work remotely for a period of months or even years, according to Migration Policy Institute analyst Kate Hooper, who analyzed data from law firm Fragomen.
Thailand began experimenting early in the pandemic with programs designed to attract longer-term travelers, such as golf-course quarantines and “sandbox” arrangements. The country got about one-fifth of its economic juice from tourism before Covid-19 arrived.
Now, in the spirit of targeting more digital nomads and business-leisure travelers, the government has approved tax incentives for long-term visa holders and will lift all remaining Covid-related entry restrictions from July 1.