Life on the road isn’t easy, and business travelers want to fit a little leisure—or bleisure, as the combination is commonly called—into their lives.

That’s according to new research from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which says its new report is the first study in the industry that shows that work-life balance is a top priority for business travelers.

“The issue is so significant that 25 percent of respondent travel managers are developing new key performance indicators (KPIs) based on the traveler experience,” ACTE Executive Director Greeley Koch wrote in the report, Meet the Modern Business Traveller [PDF], based on a study conducted jointly with American Express Global Business Travel.

A couple of key highlights from the study: 48 percent of business travel managers said there has been a strong shift in traveling workers who mentioned a desire for a better work-life balance, while 42 percent of respondents said business travelers were looking for ways to combine business and leisure.

The report is based on interviews with 254 business travel managers and buyers.

A Cultural Shift

The report confirms a cultural shift that has been reflected in other recent studies: An MMGY Global report found that many millennials are trying to mix leisure into their business trips.

The ACTE study largely mirrors those results, finding, for example, that millennials rank work-life balance even higher in importance than safety. And while older business travelers prioritize safety more than younger ones, nearly half prioritize work-life balance and pairing up business and leisure.

“Modern business travelers are less frenetic and more deliberate,” Koch wrote in the report’s introduction. “They travel for two reasons: to meet their corporate objectives and to support their life’s objectives. For a growing number of them, the first is meaningless if it doesn’t contribute to the second.”

ACTE represents 12 million business travelers in more than 100 countries.

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