Business or Pleasure? What is the Meaning of this Question?

In the business world, there are plenty of terms and phrases that are complicated. One phrase that gets thrown around a lot is the phrase “business or pleasure”. Most of the time, it’s framed as a question. So what does this question mean?

When someone asks you if you’re doing a certain project for business or pleasure, they are asking if you’re doing it for business reasons or for personal enjoyment reasons. When you’re on an airline, you’ll hear the staff ask “business or pleasure” because they want to know if your trip is professional and serious, or fun and for your own enjoyment.

The rest of this article will cover what the question means, and how to use it.

What “Business Or Pleasure” Means

To understand this question, you should break it down by the two words involved: business and pleasure. From a general standpoint, business refers to finance and work. So, when someone is asking “business or pleasure”, the business part means work or something for financial gain.

Pleasure implies that you’re doing something for pleasure, or your own enjoyment. So when you put the two words together and form a question, quite literally you’re asking someone if they’re doing something for their financial gain, or for their personal enjoyment.

There’s also a few variations of the phrase, with the most popular being “business before pleasure”. The same definitions from before apply here, except instead of “or”, there’s “before”. This new definition is saying that business should be more important than pleasure.

To put it in simpler terms, by saying “business before pleasure”, you’re saying your financial or work obligations take precedence over your enjoyment. If you’re on a business trip, you can say this phrase often to remind yourself to focus.

How To Use “Business Or Pleasure”

This question can be used in a variety of ways, including in professional environments, and in casual settings with your close friends. For example, people may jokingly ask “business or pleasure?” when their friend is about to go somewhere or do something.

If you’re working in a travel-related field (such as a flight attendant), then you’ll often ask people who are traveling if they’re traveling for “business or pleasure”. There is no limitation to where and when you can use this phrase since it’s used in both formal and informal environments.

Here is an example: “Sir, is this trip for business or pleasure?”