One in five Aussies has no plans to take a holiday

Nearly one in five of all Aussies has no intention of taking a trip in the foreseeable future despite experts drawing a link between the act of planning a holiday and happiness levels.

A 2010 study from Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands looked at the link between holidays and happiness by surveying 1530 adults, 974 of whom had been on a trip during the research period.

It found that people were happiest while anticipating the holiday rather than actually during it, and so the experts behind the report suggested that, instead of going on one big trip a year, people could more effectively boost their happiness levels with a series of short trips spaced a few months apart.

Nontheless, the new data from Roy Morgan Research showed that 3.6 million Australians have no plans to take a holiday in the future – 18.3% of the overall population.

Meanwhile, 14.1 million Aussies intend to take a trip in the next 12 months – 72.4% of the population. Of those, almost half plan to depart in the next three months, with nearly 20% to head off within the next three to five months and 17.8% in six to 12 months.

“While our data does not measure happiness levels, it does tell us that 2.2 million of these non-trip intenders are from the more disadvantaged end of the socio-economic spectrum (the E and FG quintiles), so their lack of holiday plans is most likely due more to budgetary restrictions than not wanting to travel,” Roy Morgan group account director Angela Smith said.

“Certainly, our data tell us that people who say they have no intention of taking a holiday are more likely than the average Aussie to be worried about interest rates at the moment and less likely to feel financially secure.”

However, Smith said the research also showed that these Australians are also less likely to engage in leisure activities ranging from reading a book to holding dinner parties.

“While some of these pursuits involve a certain financial outlay, some are free or extremely low cost, accessible to people from all walks of life – suggesting that the below-average leisure participation of non-trip intenders may be due to other factors beyond money,” she said.

“Which, in turn, suggests that they probably need a holiday more than they realise.”

Certain sectors of the population were found to be noticeably less likely than average to be planning a trip of any kind. Nearly a third of Aussies aged 65 or over and 27.3% of single parents don’t have any holiday plans at all.

Socio-economically disadvantaged Australians are the least likely to foresee any holidays in their near or distant future: 35.2% of people from the lowest socio-economic quintile* (FG) say they have absolutely no intention to travel.

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Angela Smith holiday intention roy morgan travel trends