TRAVEL INSIDER
The vacation curse of 'time poverty'
"I'm tired as hell and I can't take it anymore. I need a vacation."
Whether those words are uttered, or simply thought, they pretty much sum up
the feelings of hard-working Americans, whether they're single, a couple or
married with kids.
""The pace of work in contemporary life has gotten to the point where most
people would declare it frenetic," according to Peter Yesawich, chairman and
CEO of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a PR/marketing/ad agency, and a
developer of the 16-year-old National Travel Monitor. Yesawich offered an
advance peek at the 2007 survey, which is based on a sampling of 1,800
travelers in January and February, at a meeting of travel editors in Los
Angeles in April.
Singles and couples normally can vacation at almost any time. For families,
summer is the time, especially for those with school-age children. Family
travel, not surprisingly, is on the rise.
"Family travel [and that includes grandparents] this year will continue to
grow faster than all other forms of leisure travel," Yesawich said in a
follow-up phone interview. But in six of 10 households, both Mom and Dad work
full time. This means they are trying to juggle all of the other commitments
in the family's schedule at the same time, Yesawich said. "Booking a vacation
becomes a Herculean challenge for them. And that translates into a growing
sense of parental guilt -- that we don't spend enough time with our kids."
Although summer is prime holiday time and vacation days are in short
supply, 57 percent of parents surveyed said they have no qualms about taking
their kids out of school if they can't travel between Memorial Day and Labor
Day.
Other trends noted in the 2007 National Travel Monitor, which was
released in May by Orlando-based YPB&R and Yankelovich Partners, include:
• Length of vacations. In many minds -- mine included -- a typical vacation
is a week or two. In actuality, according to Yesawich, only 23 percent of
Americans take what's called an "extended vacation" of five-plus days. Another
 Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up. |
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