At least we try to make the most of our limited vacation time, by breaking it up and mixing work and pleasure, according to University of Guelph tourism professor Statia Elliot (who wrote to Maclean’s in an email time-stamped 11 p.m., six hours before leaving for a working vacation in Honolulu). Currently, Canadians take five “leisure trips” per year, averaging two nights each, with 80 per cent of them domestic, she says.
The recession may sharpen that trend too, keeping Canadians on shorter, mixed trips closer to home, says Waterloo tourism professor Stephen Smith. This year, Canadian tour operators reported a 15 per cent drop in travel business and airlines are predicting combined global losses topping $9 billion, thanks largely to the growing numbers who opt to spend their leisure time locally.
This summer, for instance, Bob Lai, an exhaustively well-travelled 26-year-old Vancouver engineer, embarked on a weekend “staycation” with a group of friends: eight twentysomething working professionals and one medical student. The goal? “To enjoy a vacation as a group together, and spend as little money as possible,” Lai explains. They hit Vancouver hot spots that, as locals, they generally ignore. A brewery tour at Granville Island, for example, preceded a picnic at a nearby park with meats and cheeses bought from its labyrinthine food market. They also biked the seawall surrounding Stanley Park and stopped for a swim at Third Beach, a local treasure overlooking Burrard Inlet, near Siwash Rock. “We were shocked at how nice the beach was,” says Lai, as he and his friends never usually venture past the west side beaches surrounding Kitsilano.
La dolce vita, right here at home. Now imagine what they could do if they had 38 days leave—like they do in Paris.
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