If you have a demanding job with not much vacation time, it can be hard to find the time to do much traveling. If you’re dreaming of exploring more of the world and spending more time on travel, but you can’t get the time off, here are some tips to help you.
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How to Travel More When you have Limited Time Off
There are a few tips and tricks when it comes to travel more often when a 9 to 5 job is part of our everyday life.
You will often need to play the smart and subtle game of negotiating days off, paid and unpaid leave days, as well as playing around with bank and national holidays.
At the beginning of every year, right after you’ve added your purpose of traveling more to your New Year’s resolution, display a nice map and a calendar on top of your table, grab a cup of coffee, and start your planning.
You can of course use sites like Practice Match to find the jobs with the most annual leave, but if it’s still not enough, try these tricks.
Prioritize Your Bucket List
You won’t be able to go all around the world with only ten vacation days. Limited vacation time doesn’t automatically mean that you can’t tick off your travel bucket list.
You can definitely to places like Europe and even Australia in two weeks, as long as you prioritize them.
You might be able to take a month-long road trip through Crete, but you can easily manage a week in Santorini or a weekend trip elsewhere in Greece. The important thing is to decide which destinations and activities are the most important to you and then plan around those.
Plan Your Days Off In Advance
If you plan, you’re more likely to use up your time off, take more vacation days at once, and feel much happier. Planning a trip also gives you a better chance of having your time off request approved by your boss.
Plan one big trip a year or a week or longer, and know months in advance when that trip will be before other people can ask for the same time off.
Planning also means you have your trip to look forward to, which can be almost as exciting as the trip itself. Add to that excitement, the thrill of crafting your packing list, whether it’s for a beach vacation or a road adventure.
Travel Closer To Home
Travel doesn’t have to mean continent-hopping or destinations thousands away. You can travel closer to home too.
Wherever you live, there will be somewhere interesting within driving distance that you can visit for shorter trips. It’s also a much cheaper way to travel than jetting across the ocean.
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Take Long Weekend Trips
When you don’t have a lot of vacation time, you need to perfect the art of the long weekend trip.
Pair one or two vacation days with a weekend, and you get three or four days for a trip. You can see and do a lot over a long weekend.
Places within driving distances work well for long weekends but don’t count out a destination for a long weekend trip because you can’t drive there. See where is within a short flight from you too, especially if you live near an airport.
If you don’t get much time off, plan one big trip a year, and then spread out the rest of your annual leave to give yourself several long weekends away throughout the year.
Travel doesn’t only have to be for people who work for themselves or who get a lot of annual leave. If you use your time off wisely, you can see a lot of the world.
Are you ready to travel more?
Let me know in the comments below!
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About me:
I have lived in Chania, Crete, since 2016. As a local, I have an intimate knowledge of the Crete. I host culinary and concierge tours and experiences in Crete and write about the island for several travel media. During the last five years, I have helped many travelers plan the perfect holiday in Crete. I co-authored DK Eyewitness Top 10 Crete and had more glasses of frappe than any regular person could ever handle.