For Indians, work haunts holidays too: survey

Deprived of leave, more than one out of five Indians prefer small weekend trips over long vacations, found a global travel survey. Soubhik Mitra reports.

Deprived of leave, more than one out of five Indians prefer small weekend trips over long vacations, found a global travel survey.

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The finding was among several conclusions of the Expedia Vacation Deprivation 2012 survey that showed that Indians are fourth most leave deprived people in the world.

According to the survey that polled more than 8500 travellers across 22 countries, 23% Indians said that their work pressure allows only short trips.

In comparison, 17% of those polled from developed countries such as US, UK, France and Italy liked short getaways. In fact majority of them (45%) said they preferred one long vacation and several short holidays, found the survey.

"Vacations play an important role in relaxing and re-energising employees while enhancing their motivations and productivity," said Manmeet Aluwalia, marketing head, Expedia (India).

"But the average number of holidays enjoyed by Indians have dropped significantly from 25 in 2011 to 20 this year," he added.

Another finding of the survey concurred that work environment made it difficult holidays stressful for Indians.

The survey found that 12% respondents said that they take two days into a vacation to completely switch off work. Another 12% said that they couldn't forget work throughout the vacation while 4% respondent said that they start celebrating a vacation half way into it.

The regional break-up showed that 11% Mumbai take two days to get into holiday mode which is at par with other metro cities such as Delhi (11%) and Chennai (13%)

"Smart phones barely allow us to switch off from work. I have often inadvertently checked office mails out of curiosity and ruined holidays," said Pratik Mohanty, a senior level marketing professional based in Borivli.