Few people would likely say they don’t enjoy traveling. Travel provides an opportunity to experience different cultures, visit idyllic locales and enjoy some rest and relaxation.
But as much as people love to travel, finding more time to do so is not always so easy, even for those people with a sufficient amount of vacation days at their disposal. Oftentimes, finding more time to travel requires some extra and earlier planning.
Reconsider when you travel.
Building a trip around a long weekend is an easy way to find more time to travel. Consider the holidays that fall on a Monday, such as Memorial Day, Labor Day and Columbus Day. Plan a getaway for these long weekends and you won’t even need to use a vacation day. If you have the vacation time to burn, extend the trip one day by leaving on Friday or returning on Tuesday. By the time your trip ends, you will have enjoyed a three-day getaway without using any vacation time or a four-day extended break during which you used just a single day of vacation time. Planning a week-long trip on a holiday week is another way to save a vacation day for later in the year.
Extend business trips.
Business travelers who typically travel on Mondays and/or return home on Fridays can extend those trips to include the weekend preceding or following the trip. This gives you a better chance to explore the city where conferences or client meetings are being held, as business trips typically leave little time to get to a know a city or see its attractions. Business travelers can plan family trips around their work trips, giving families a great and often cost-effective way to see various locales.
Use your allotted vacation time.
A 2013 study from Oxford Economics found that American workers took an average of 16 days of vacation in 2013, which represented a roughly 20 percent decline from 2000, when workers took an average of 20.3 vacation days. The United States Travel Association discovered a similar pattern, finding that in 2013 workers used just 16 of their nearly 21 days of earned time off. Perhaps the easiest way working men and women can find more time to travel is to make use of all of the vacation days they earn as oppose to letting them fall by the wayside at the end of their companies’ calendar years.
Negotiate with your employer.
Many employers have grown increasingly flexible as technology has made it easier for employees to work remotely. Men and women who want to find more time to travel should not be afraid to negotiate more travel time with their employers, even offering to work remotely from whichever destination they plan to visit. This can be an especially effective way for parents to extend family vacations in the summertime, as one parent can take the kids in the mornings and afternoons while the other works. Come nighttime, the whole family can still enjoy all the fun of a typical vacation.
Travel is a luxury that even busy men and women can enjoy if they employ certain strategies to create more time to get away.
