Vacation Mode: Time Off, Travel Habits & the Aviation Industry
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APEX Insight: As human beings, we’re always doing. Research suggests we should check in to a flight more often, in order to check out.
You say you need a vacation, but will you take one? If you work in the United States, there’s a good chance the answer is no. And that’s not just because the US is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee any minimum annual leave, meaning it’s up to employers to decide how much paid vacation and public holidays their employees are entitled to. According to a 2016 report from the US Department of Labor, between 51 and 79 percent of workers had access to paid vacations, but a study by Bankrate.com released in the same year showed that over half of Americans who did receive paid vacation didn’t take all of it.
No Vacation Nation
Over the past decade, the United States has become known as the “No Vacation Nation.” A survey by Skift found that 34 percent of Americans didn’t take a single day off in 2016.
Reasons for this trend include fast-paced work environments, fear of layoffs and avoidance of backlog that accumulates during time off. Workaholism has become so ingrained in American culture that even though companies like Netflix, Virgin Group and LinkedIn have implemented unlimited vacation policies, Americans with these benefits still don’t take more than a couple of weeks off per year.
34% of Americans didn’t take a single day off in 2016.
Fortunately for the airline industry, less time off hasn’t necessarily translated into less time in the air. According to Southwest Airlines spokesperson Thais Hanson, the airline saw record load factors in 2016: “At Southwest, we haven’t seen anything in our customer data that suggests that leisure travel is off. In fact, our leisure customer trends have been strong.” Statistics from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) show that business has been good for North American airlines over the past several years, with profits increasing from $1.7 billion in 2011 to $20.3 billion in 2016. The seven years before that period were marked by fluctuations between positive and negative profit margins.
49% of business travelers extended their trip to a different city or country in 2016.
A plausible explanation, supported by Skift’s research, is that those who are least likely to take time off work are also less likely to be able to afford flight tickets. Or, perhaps, the line between business and leisure travel is becoming blurred, much like the vision of an overworked employee who needs a break from the computer screen.
Mixing Business and Leisure
“Bleisure” has been used to describe the tendency to mix business and leisure travel. Data collected by Booking.com revealed that 49 percent of business travelers extended their trip to a different city or country in 2016, with nearly one-third of this group intending to do the same in 2017.
“Business travel is increasingly seen as an opportunity to expand horizons, find inspiration and progress in a career,” explains Ripsy Bandourian, director of Product Development, Booking.com. “Today’s laptop and latte breed of employee is increasingly mobile and fluid with their travel plans, looking to strike a balance between business and leisure travel.”
“Business travel its increasingly seen as an opportunity to expand horizons.”
Data shows that bleisure trips have become more common in recent years. Six out of 10 international respondents to a survey conducted by BridgeStreet Global Hospitality were more likely to travel for bleisure in 2014 than they were five years earlier. Seventy-eight percent agreed that incorporating leisure into business travel adds value to their trip, suggesting that pleasure-seekers need look no further than their next business trip.
Getting Tripped Up
While Americans’ aversion to taking time off from work doesn’t appear to be affecting the airline industry, it can be detrimental to physical and mental health. In an article detailing the importance of taking vacations for personal well-being, Susan Krauss Whitbourne, professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, writes that “Chronic stress takes its toll in part on our body’s ability to resist infection, maintain vital functions and even avoid injury … Mentally, not only do you become more irritable, depressed and anxious, but your memory will become worse and you’ll make poorer decisions.”
Most office jobs require at least medium- to high-level memory capacity and decision-making skills, so by refusing time off with the goal of furthering their careers, employees may actually be negatively impacting their performance at work. Krauss Whitbourne explains that vacations can break the stress cycle, citing that time away from the office allows employees to gain perspective on problems that the daily grind is preventing them from finding solutions to. >
Relax, Do It
Virgin Group’s adoption of an unlimited vacation policy in 2014, which applied to employees of the parent company in the UK and US, was met with skepticism. Bloomberg questioned whether the move might actually deter employees from taking time off, and the Independent suggested that it was really more of a PR stunt meant to enhance Richard Branson’s image as an innovative leader.
6/10 respondents were more likely to travel for bleisure in 2014 than they were five years earlier.
While the policy has not yet been extended to Virgin Group’s airline subsidiaries, Virgin Atlantic launched a #GetOutOfOffice campaign in September of last year. Targeting the British working population, a third of whom are not taking their total annual leave allowance, according to statistics cited by Virgin Atlantic, the campaign included a tongue-in-cheek video about how the office is the country’s most popular holiday destination.
Employees would be right to take Virgin Atlantic’s advice and get out of the office – not only for their own well-being, but also for the health of the economy. In 2016, France, which is among the top countries in the world in terms of paid leave, with over 30 paid days off per year, including vacation and public holidays, ranked higher than the UK on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s list of countries by GDP and productivity. According to a 2015 study published in the Harvard Business Review, “Leaders in countries with more paid vacation days actually tend to seem slightly more likely to work at a faster pace, have a higher quantity focus and feel more impatient.”
Richard Branson once said: “We are human beings, not human doings – so let’s start acting like it, by taking the time simply to be and appreciate the beauty of the world.” Maybe if we spent more time surfing the waves instead of the web, and lounging in hotel sheets rather than filling out spreadsheets, we’d be more efficient in the workplace and more appreciative of our world and the people in it – at home, at work and abroad.
“Vacation Mode” was originally published in the 7.3 June/July issue of APEX Experience magazine.