holiday stress

Planning a holiday and keeping everyone add can add to female summertime stress

Planning a holiday and keeping everyone happy can add to female summertime stress

Holiday season has started: traditionally a time for sun, sea, sand – and stress, especially if you’re a woman. Or at least that’s what figures from a travel company survey suggest.

Research among 1000 people by Momondo shows that women are far more likely to be stressed than men when it comes to planning holidays (33% of women compared with 23% of men). The same percentage of women and men endured stress during the journey and getting to the destination. Overall, 54% of people feel more relaxed while on holiday, but one in four women still felt stressed about some aspect of their holiday while they were meant to be enjoying it. Four in 10 men admitted that they felt no stress whatsoever regarding their holiday (planning, getting there and coming home) compared with a quarter of women.

Momondo said: “Commonly women may be more involved with the organisation and planning stage of a trip, which can involve some skill in balancing a group’s expectations and budgets. This could result in some anxiety in connection to the holiday.” The company offers some tips on how to have a stress-free holiday.

Two of the best tips are: remembering to unplug and leave your work at home; and lowering your expectations. It’s pointless piling pressure on yourself to create the perfect holiday for everyone else. Let go of responsibility and have a good time too.

Even beautiful beaches can’t distract stressed holidaymakers from checking their work emails.

The bank holiday week could offer the final opportunity to take a break and enjoy what’s left of the summer. Yet Brits struggle to unwind when they go away on holiday, taking on average four days, eight hours and 24 minutes before they can finally relax. That’s according to a survey by recruitment site Monster.co.uk.

A third of Britons take five days to relax, 40% take four days, one in 10 manages to unwind after just one day – and yet 18% never get into holiday mode at all. Why? Because they can’t switch off from work, and will continue to check their work emails in between trips to the beach and the pool. They may have flown miles away to escape the daily routine, but succeed only in bringing their stresses along with them.

Monster.co.uk’s Michael Gentle said: “The fact it is taking so long for workers to unwind on holiday is indicative of the ‘always switched on’ culture we now live in. By not relaxing fully, workers are putting themselves at risk of burnout, which will be detrimental to them and their employer in the long run.”