For the first time in nearly four years, my family took a weeklong vacation this summer. We rented a cabin on a beautiful mountain lake and spent our days boating and swimming with the kids and our nights relaxing by the campfire — with wine for the adults and s’mores for the kids.
It was amazing. We already booked the cabin for next summer.
Sadly, nearly half of working Americans took little or no vacation this summer. Instead of spending a week at the beach, embarking on a long road trip, going camping or enjoying a “staycation” at home, many Americans spent their entire summer toiling away at work.
That’s according to a new survey from travel industry website Skift, which found that just one-third of Americans took a week or two off of work for vacation. Nearly half of working Americans said they either took no vacation (37.4 percent) or just one to three days off work (11 percent).
Unfortunately, the all-work-and-no-play trend is nothing new in the United States. In fact, America has earned itself this undesirable nickname from the Center for Economic and Policy Research: the “no-vacation nation.”
When Skift surveyed workers last year about vacation plans, a whopping 60 percent of Americans said they either could not afford to take a vacation (31.3 percent) or they were too busy to take time off work (30.2 percent).
In 2014, 52.9 percent of workers surveyed by Skift said they either took no vacation (42.8 percent) or they took just one to three days off (10.1 percent).
Don’t think you can afford to take a real vacation? Check out “13 Ways to Have Your Dream Vacation for Half the Price.”
Did you take a vacation this summer? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.
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