![Joss Bay, Broadstairs, England - Aug 2008](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Joss_Bay%2C_Broadstairs%2C_England_-_Aug_2008.jpg)
A vacation (
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
) or holiday (
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
) is either a
leave of absence
The labour law concept of leave, specifically paid leave or, in some countries' long-form, a leave of absence, is an authorised prolonged absence from work, for any reason authorised by the workplace. When people "take leave" in this way, they are ...
from a regular job or an instance of leisure travel away from home. People often take a vacation during specific
holiday
A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work including school, are suspended or reduced. Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate an event or tra ...
observances or for specific
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...
s or celebrations. Vacations are often spent with
friends
''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa ...
or
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
. Vacations may include a specific trip or journey, usually for the purpose of
recreation
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasur ...
or
tourism
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...
.
A person may take a longer break from work, such as a
sabbatical
A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work.
The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Biblical practice of ''shmita'' (sabbatical year), which is related to agriculture. According to ...
,
gap year
A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is typically a year-long break before or after college/university during which students engage in various educational and developmental activities, such as travel or some type of regular work. Gap yea ...
, or
career break A career break is a period of time out from employment. It is commonly used for people to take time out of their career for personal or professional development.
History
A career break is usually between one month and two years long. Six months to ...
.
The concept of taking a vacation is a recent invention, and has developed through the last two centuries. Historically, the idea of travel for recreation was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (see
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tuto ...
). In the
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
culture of early
America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, taking a break from work for reasons other than weekly observance of the Sabbath was frowned upon. However, the modern concept of vacation was led by a later religious movement encouraging
spiritual retreat
The meaning of a spiritual retreat can be different for different religious communities. Spiritual retreats are an integral part of many Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian and Sufi communities.
In Hinduism and Buddhism, meditative retreats are ...
and recreation. The notion of breaking from work periodically took root among the middle and working class.
Etymology
In the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, ''vacation'' once specifically referred to the long summer break taken by the
law courts
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance ...
and then later the term was applied to universities. The custom was introduced by
William the Conqueror
William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first House of Normandy, Norman List of English monarchs#House of Norman ...
from
Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
where it facilitated the grape harvest. In the past, many
upper-class
Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...
families moved to a
summer home
A summer house or summerhouse has traditionally referred to a building or shelter used for relaxation in warm weather. This would often take the form of a small, roofed building on the grounds of a larger one, but could also be built in a garden ...
for part of the year, leaving their usual home vacant.
Regional meaning
''Vacation'', in English-speaking
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, describes recreational
travel
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...
, such as a short pleasure trip, or a journey abroad. People in
Commonwealth
A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...
countries use the term ''holiday'' to describe absence from work as well as to describe a vacation or journey. Vacation can mean either staying home or going somewhere.
Canadians
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
often use ''vacation'' and ''holiday'' interchangeably referring to a trip away from home or time off work. In
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and the
UK, ''holiday'' can refer to a vacation or a
public holiday
A public holiday, national holiday, or legal holiday is a holiday generally established by law and is usually a non-working day during the year.
Sovereign nations and territories observe holidays based on events of significance to their history, ...
.
The Vanderbilts,
Rockefellers
The Rockefeller family () is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothe ...
, Carnegies,
Huntingtons and other fabulously wealthy industrialists built their own spectacular "great camps" in the
Adirondacks
The Adirondack Mountains (; a-də-RÄN-dak) form a massif in northeastern New York with boundaries that correspond roughly to those of Adirondack Park. They cover about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2). The mountains form a roughly circular d ...
of
upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Is ...
where they could spend time with their families in private luxury. The scions of
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
took to declaring that they would "vacate" their city homes for their lakeside summer retreats, and the term "vacation" replaced the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
"holiday" in common parlance.
In
Hungarian, the word ''vakáció'' can mean both a recreational trip, an officially granted absence from work (generally in warmer months), and the summer (longest) school break. For absence from work, the word ''szabadság'' (freedom/liberty) can be used, possibly as ''betegszabadság'' (sickness freedom/sickness liberty) when the reason of absence is medical in nature.
Family vacation
Family vacation refers to recreation taken together by the family. Family vacation can be ritual—for example, annually around the same time—or it can be a one-time event. It can involve travel to a far-flung spot or, for families on a tight budget, a stay-at-home staycation. Some examples of favorite family vacations might include family cruises, trips to popular theme parks, ski vacations, beach vacations, food vacations or similar types of family trips.
Vacation research
Research on the effects of vacations on health, well-being and work performance started in the 1990s. The first meta-analysis on the effects of vacations was published in 2009. A 2013 literature review on the health and wellness benefits of travel experiences revealed beneficial effects of vacationing. More recent studies report on the positive effects of vacations as both a passive recovery process due to removal from job stress and as the active pursuit of relaxing, pleasurable and physical activities.
Anticipation effects
Anticipation effects of vacations refer to the changes that may occur in the time leading up to a vacation. Anticipation effects can be positive and negative. They can manifest in stress from workload or homeload (house work such as cleaning) leading up to a vacation. Research shows that health and well-being levels decrease from the second last week before vacation to the last week before vacation. This is explained by a higher workload leading up to vacation. Increasing homeload before vacation also explains a decrease in health and well-being prior to vacation, but only for women.
Moreover, research on Christmas holidays found that positive well-being effects such as enthusiasm rose in the weeks leading up to Christmas, whereas negative well-being effects such as nervousness decreased in the same time period. These effects can be explained by the pleasant expectations, called “Vorfreude” in German, that arise in the time leading up to the Christmas holidays.
Vacation effects
In a series of studies from 2010, 2012
and 2013, a team of researchers from the Radboud University Nijmegen analyzed the effects of vacations on subjective wellbeing in approximately 250 employees. The researchers examined vacations before, during and after their vacation. Via telephone interviews during vacation, the researchers found that self-reported health and wellbeing improved during vacation. However, within the first week of returning to work, employee’s wellbeing lapsed to pre-vacation levels, irrespective of the duration or type of vacation. The research team also found that subjective vacation experiences, such as relaxation and control over one’s activities boost vacation effects.
Creativity
According to a scientific study from 2014, vacations have an effect on an individual’s creativity. Researchers examined creativity by way of an idea-generation task (
Guilford's Alternate Uses
The Alternate Uses Task (AUT) was designed by J.P. Guilford in 1967. It is used to measure divergent thinking.
Design
The intent of the AUT is to have the test taker think creatively. It is generally used with a time-constraint, and consists of ...
) in 46 Dutch employees before and after a three-week summer vacation. Participants had to generate creative uses for common daily things such as a brick or piece of paper. The results showed that ideas were just as original after the vacation as they were before. However, employees did produce a wider range of ideas after a vacation as opposed to before, showing greater mental flexibility as a result from taking a vacation. Specifically, it seems that after a vacation employees consider a greater range of aspects of thoughts and avoid routine solutions as opposed to before going on vacation.
Romantic relationships
In a study from 2012,
researchers found that a vacation may act as a relationship booster by offering the opportunity to increase interactions with a partner and by enhancing spouse support. This finding highlights the importance of high quality contact between partners during a vacation. Specifically, vacationers who conversed extensively and positively with one another felt more relaxed, derived more pleasure from vacation experiences and felt more detached from their work during their holiday trip. Another study found that satisfaction with vacations can explain couples’ relationship commitment and suggests that vacation may serve as a means for strengthening relationships. Another team of researchers found that shared experiences during vacations, such as effective communication, showing affection, or experiencing new things together, were positively associated with couples’ day-to-day functioning at home.
Vacation mechanisms: why vacations are beneficial
Leisure is an important ingredient for overall well-being. It provides people with freetime and possibilities to engage in non-obligatory activities. This helps people to recover from job stress. In 2007, researchers developed four measures for assessing how people recuperate and unwind from work during leisure time. This study showed that four recovery experiences help to lower stress and aid recovery from strain: psychological detachment from work, relaxation, mastery, and control. Meaning and affiliation were later added, leading to the DRAMMA-model: Detachment, Relaxation, Autonomy, Mastery, Meaning and Affiliation.
* Detachment refers to mental distancing from work-related tasks. Shifting focus and thinking about something other than work can be achieved by reading a book or engaging in physical activities, for example.
* Relaxation refers to low levels of physical and mental activation coupled with a positive mood. Relaxation activities calm the body and mind: for example progressive muscle relaxation, a massage, or taking a warm bath.
* Autonomy refers to a sense of being in control of your surroundings. This concerns, for example, being able to reserve certain periods of the day for enjoyable activities of your own choice.
* Mastery can be achieved by activities that challenge you and provide opportunities to improve skills and knowledge, giving a sense of accomplishment. This can involve learning new skills like playing an instrument or sports. improving existing skills, or gaining new knowledge.
* Meaning refers to leisure activities that give people a sense of making a difference in the world and contributing to a greater cause. Examples are volunteering, cultural activities or making art.
* Affiliation refers to the sense of belongingness and the sense of feeling connected to others. Activities that can lead to affiliation are for example going to parties with friends, playing games or cooking and eating together.
Each of these mechanisms serve as a mediating link between any form of leisure activities and subjective well-being. Autonomy, Mastery and Affiliation are similar to the core mechanisms in
self-determination theory
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's innate growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It pertains to the motivation behind people's choices in the absence of extern ...
.
Methodology
![Vacation research design](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Vacation_research_design.jpg)
Conducting research on vacations is challenging because vacationing concerns a process that stretches across longer time periods and people are often traveling and therefore hard to reach for research purposes.
Randomized controlled trial
A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical te ...
s in which people would be assigned to certain travel types are costly to realize and most people would probably not like to be assigned to a specific type of holiday. Accordingly, researchers have described a few important features of vacation research that help to generate reliable and valid results.
* Measures before, during and after vacation: Repeated measures in the same persons are required to study vacationing as a process that unfolds its effects over time.
* On vacation measurements: It is important to not only use pre- and post-vacation measurements but to also obtain information during vacation. This is because post-vacation measurements are biased by work resumption and fade-out may already have begun. On vacation measures could be done via live phone calls/interviews or time-stamped assessments via smartphone apps.
* Pre-vacation measurements: Research has shown that health and well-being slightly decrease shortly before vacation compared to two weeks before vacation. Therefore, vacation effects are defined as the difference between on-vacation measurements compared to pre-vacation measurements conducted at least two weeks prior to the holiday.
* Fade-out measurements: It is also useful to compare several post-vacation measurements with pre-vacation measurements to determine whether and how fast vacation effects diminish.
Vacation policy
In nearly all countries worldwide, there are minimum requirements as to the
annual leave
Annual leave is a period of paid time off work granted by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes. Depending on the employer's policies, differing number of days may be offered, and the employee may be required to gi ...
that must be afforded to an employee (see also
List of minimum annual leave by country
In the majority of nations, including all industrialised nations except the United States, advances in employee relations have seen the introduction of statutory agreements for minimum employee leave from work—that is the amount of entitlemen ...
).
Even in the United States, where no federal requirements as to minimum annual leave exist, many large corporations have vacation policies, some allowing employees to take weeks off and some even allowing unlimited vacation. Unlimited vacation arrangements may nonetheless come with implicit expectations, for instance, it may be implied that an employee should not take more than about the average number of vacation days taken by others. They normally also have the consequence that employees who leave the company receive no monetary compensation for leave days not taken.
According to the U.S. Travel Association, Americans collectively did not use 662 million vacation days in 2016. More than half of all working people in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
forfeited paid time off at the end of the year. Two-thirds of people still do work while they are on vacation.
Unlimited paid vacation policies
In order to go on a vacation in the first place, workers make use of paid time off granted by their employers. Recently, unlimited paid time off policies (UPTO) are rising in popularity. In a study from 2022, researchers propose two competing processes and boundary conditions when it comes to unlimited paid time off. These processes can at the same time “unlock the best” and “unleash the beast”. On the one hand, unlimited time paid time off can increase employees’ feeling of control, accountability, and work engagement. On the other hand, unlimited paid time off may set detrimental social processes in motion which could also lead to self-endangering work behaviors, long working hours, and exhaustion. Workers may feel discouraged from taking time off, because they lack social norms on leave taking, feel insecure about taking leave or feel guilty towards their team when taking time off during busy periods at work. Absence of formal rules may lead to newly emerging informal rules which are not communicated and can increase social conflicts. The researchers also argue that leave changes from an individual trading good into a collective good under unlimited leave policies.
Impact of digital communications
Recent developments in communication technology—such as internet, mobile, instant messaging, presence tracking—have begun to change the nature of vacation. Vacation today now could mean absence from the workplace rather than temporary cession of work. For a minority subset of workers in North America and the United Kingdom, it is now the norm to carry on working or remain on call while on vacation rather than abandon work altogether. Some people do
remote work
Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...
while on vacation. Antithetically, workers may take time out of the office to go on vacation, but remain plugged-in to work-related communications networks. While remaining plugged-in over vacation may generate short-term business benefits, the long-term psychological impacts of these developments are only beginning to be understood.
Workcations
Since the pandemic started and working life became more flexible, working from various locations became more common. Specifically, workcations that combine aspects of work and travel can offer periods of detachment and relaxation in the same way vacations do, although those periods are shorter than during a traditional vacation.
A study published in 2020 regarding
digital nomad
Digital nomads are people who travel freely while working remotely using technology and the internet. Such people generally have minimal material possessions and work remotely in temporary housing, hotels, cafes, public libraries, co-working spac ...
s explains how the borders between work and leisure disappear.
Digital nomads can travel and work because they are not bound by normal work structures such as offices and 9-to-5 life. However, creating one’s own structures, routines and work communities can also be experienced as burdensome.
In popular culture
Family vacation and vacation in general has become a common theme in many books and films. Writers often draw on common occurrences that take place during a vacation such as
disaster
A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
s and bonding.
See also
*
Active vacation
Adventure travel is a type of niche tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk (real or perceived), and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has grown in r ...
*
Adventure travel
Adventure travel is a type of niche tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk (real or perceived), and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has grown in r ...
*
Annual leave
Annual leave is a period of paid time off work granted by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes. Depending on the employer's policies, differing number of days may be offered, and the employee may be required to gi ...
*
Bank holiday
A bank holiday is a national public holiday in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies. The term refers to all public holidays in the United Kingdom, be they set out in statute, declared by royal proclamation or held ...
*
Family reunion
A family reunion is an occasion when many members of an extended family congregate. Sometimes reunions are held regularly, for example on the same date of every year.
A typical family reunion will assemble for a meal, some recreation and discussi ...
*
Mancation
A mancation is a male-only vacation. The term is believed to have come about in the 2000s, although the concept had existed considerably before then.
Travel industry trend
The concept of a gender specific trip has "been around since the first cave ...
*
Paid time off
Paid time off, planned time off, or personal time off (PTO), is a policy in some employee handbooks that provides a bank of hours in which the employer pools sick days, vacation days, and personal days that allows employees to use as the need o ...
*
Spring break
*
Summer vacation
Summer vacation or summer break is a school holiday, school break in summer between school years and the break in the school academic year. Students are off anywhere between three weeks to three months. Depending on the country and district, staff ...
References
External links
{{Authority control
Holidays
Leave of absence
Seasonal traditions
Tourist activities
Types of travel