Ways to Keep the Family Vacation From Being Another Source of Stress

family bike ride on vacation

Summary: To keep the family vacation from being another source of stress, remember it’s supposed to be relaxing and rejuvenating. Are you overplanning? For the sake of your mental health and overall wellbeing, make sure your vacation time is relaxing for you, too.

Key Points:

  • Peer-reviewed research on vacation stress identifies three primary vacation stressors.
  • Understanding the potential stressors ahead of time helps to reduce or eliminate their impact.
  • Prioritize shared experiences over checking off boxes on a to-do list.
  • It’s okay for a vacation to be almost all down time, with few planned activities.
  • Shared experiences take precedence, but everyone needs solo time, too.

Family Vacation Stress: If You Can Anticipate It, You Can Avoid It

In 2012, experts in the travel industry wrote published a study called “Vacation Stress: The Development of a Vacation Stress Model Among US Vacation Travelers that identified the following research goal:

“…to develop a vacation stress model that shows the influence exerted by internal and external stressors on the overall stress appraisal of US residents.”

Though written for marketers in the travel industry, the study contains a good summary of research on vacation stress – yes, studies exist – that can help you identify and prepare for stressors ahead of time. When you do that, you can either avoid stressors altogether or come up with plans to deal with them if and when they do occur.

Based on previous research – see articles here and here – and an original survey of over a hundred travelers recently returned from vacation, the study authors proposed the following model for understanding vacation and travel stress:

  • Vacation stress is multidimensional, caused by:
    • Internal factors
    • External factors
  • Types of stressors:
    • Pre-trip stressors
    • In-transit stressors
    • Destination stressors
  • Vacation stress has more impact on willingness to revisit the destination personally than willingness to recommend to another

Let’s take a closer look at what qualifies as pre-trip, in-transit, and destination stressors.

Pre-trip Stressors:

These are sources of stress that occur during the planning stage of a family vacation:

  • Looking for information:
    • Searching online, asking friends, calling agents
  • Making arrangements:
    • Doing the actual booking of flights, hotels, and activities
  • Packing:
    • Making decisions about what to bring and what not to bring
  • Creating itinerary:
    • Deciding on details about the trip, from broad strokes to daily schedules
Travel Stressors:

These are sources of stress that occur while in-transit to your vacation destination:

  • Logistics:
    • Flight delays, traffic, unforeseen circumstances
  • Weather:
    • Bad and/or extreme weather can disrupt any travel plans
  • Health:
    • During travel, people with chronic illnesses may experience stress, and family and friends may experience stress worrying about how they’re doing. Also, while motion sickness causes temporary discomfort, falling ill while traveling can cause significant stress
  • Safety:
    • Issues around flying, driving, or traveling by boat can cause stress for some travelers.
 Destination Stressors:

These are sources of stress that occur while at your vacation location.

  • Hotel/accommodation stress:
    • Checking In
    • Overall stay
    • Entertainment/Recreation Facilities
    • Staff
  • Other:
    • Experience with local businesses
    • Interaction with locals/community
    • Hours of sites/getting to sites

To avoid experiencing stress before, during and after family vacation, take a close look at those possible stress-points above. The first thing we want you to understand is that if you experience stress related to any of those pre-trip, in-transit, or destination situations, you’re not alone, and you can prepare ways to manage those stressors ahead of time.

How to Beat Family Vacation Stress by Planning Without Overplanning

We’ll offer our top ways to keep the family vacation from being another source of stress in our list below. To make this list, we combed the internet for suggestions from peer-reviewed research, self-help websites, travel websites, family websites, marriage counseling websites, and others, then picked our favorites and added our perspective. Note: we thought this list was the best one – aside from ours, of course.

How To Reduce Stress During Family Vacation

  1. Delegate.
    • This may be the toughest part of all, if you’re used to being the primary planner, but this touches on something we’ll address later: letting go. During the pre-trip planning phase, research shows several things can cause stress. However, our take is that it may be more the accumulation of responsibilities that cause pre-trip stress than the individual responsibilities themselves. Therefore, to prevent that build-up, delegate:
    • When searching online, prepare to be overwhelmed by the options. To handle this, narrow your options and focus before each search – i.e. plan what you’ll search for – and stick to that for the duration of that search.
    • Let your partner handle hotels while you handle transportation, or vice versa
    • If you have kids, let them plan special activity days, but retain veto power. For instance, a waterpark might be a great idea, but maybe not on a Saturday morning, when it may be s crowded it causes stress
  1. Make Peace With Your Budget.
    • If you want to enjoy your vacation, worrying about money the entire time is probably not on your to-do list. To avoid stressing about finances, make a practical, responsible budget beforehand, make sure it’s something you can live with, and leave it at that. That process will be different for everyone, but it’s important to settle the money part – or your worry about it – ahead of time. Unforeseen expenses will arise, of course: that’s why you plan practically, responsibly, and within your means. When an emergency expense pops up, look at it like an expense that could occur at home. Like a car repair or a phone replacement, for instance: not ideal, but not the end of the world – or your vacation.
  1. Manage Expectations.
    • By this, we mean managing your expectations for every part of your trip, including:
      • Traveling to the destination
      • Accommodations
      • Activities
      • Your spouse
      • Your kids
    • People, places, and things are rarely perfect. If you expect perfection at every turn – from the location, from hotel staff, from your family, from the weather – you will most likely be disappointed and probably end up stressed.
  1. Be Flexible.
    • Think of being flexible as real-time expectation management. When your schedule gets interrupted or things don’t go exactly as planned, keep perspective, adapt your plan, and find something to enjoy. Since you chose your destination wisely, you’ll probably have several options available when something gets cancelled, you have a bad weather day, or someone gets too sunburned to go snorkeling as planned.
    • For rainy days at the beach, consider – if no lightning! – a rainy walk on the beach, a day of board games, card games, cooking seafood, or simply enjoying a day with nothing scheduled but down time.
  2. Leave Your Laptop at Home.
    • We strongly encourage you to make your family vacation exactly that: a vacation. That means a break from work, from your regular schedule, and the typical stresses of daily life, including answering work emails, working on spreadsheets, working on a proposal, getting a little bit of work in – do you see where this is headed? If it involves work, do your very best – while keeping your job – to leave all work at home during vacation.
  3. When You Go, Let Go.
    • This is the assignment: when you go on your vacation, let yourself go on vacation.
    • Stressors may appear, and you may feel stress: that’s beyond your control. What you can control is how you prepare and respond. If you read this article and take our advice to heart, then you can avoid most, if not all, stressors, and have a solid plan in place to manage any stress you feel.
    • Leave all the planning you did ahead of time in the past. Your vacation experience is what you make it. Be in the moment, be easy, be adaptable, be kind to yourself, your family, and the people you meet, and you’ll increase your chances of a fun, energizing, invigorating – and stress-free – family vacation.

When you’re the head of the household, or part of a partnership that shares head-of-household duties, it’s difficult not to get stressed about everything related to that household and the people in it, i.e. your family.

We understand. We have families and we run households. Some of us have younger kids, some have older parents living with them, others have young adult children experiencing difficulty at college and/or problems getting started in the workforce.

And just like you, on tough days, all that stresses us out.

Vacation is When You Leave All That at Home

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines vacation as follows:

“A time when someone does not go to work or school but has the freedom to do what they want, such as travel or relax.”

We suggest you refer to this sentence frequently while planning your vacation. If what you plan doesn’t include the freedom to do what you want for at least part of the time, then scrap that and make a plan that does. If your goal is to rest, relax, and recharge, then make sure what you plan means you get to do exactly that. Once you leave home, let the tour guides, hotel staff, and anyone but you stress the details: your job is to simply relax and enjoy your family vacation.

 

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