Researchers determine what the perfect length of a holiday should be

Who doesn't love holidays and taking vacations, right? However, we tend to cut-short our plans and holidays for various reasons. It could be work, to come back to family or for other reasons. Well, science finally has determined what the length of your holiday should be and we aren't complaining! In fact, we're off to the boss to ask for leave...

Researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, set out to explore the effects of holiday length on health and well-being. In fact, taking a holiday has several positive effects. According to the research conducted, a holiday should ideally be longer than eight days. After conducting the study and tracking the records of the participants who went on holiday, the researchers concluded that health and well-being increased rapidly during holiday time, peaking on the eighth day. However, within one week of returning to work, health and well-being had returned to baseline level.

In conclusion, the authors wrote, “Health and well-being (H&W) improved during long summer vacations, but this positive effect was short-lived. Vacation experiences, especially pleasure, relaxation, savouring, and control, seem to be especially important for the strength and persistence of vacation (after-) effects. In short, the development in H&W during and shortly after vacation was independent of vacation duration.”

According to the study authors, “The present study makes a contribution to understanding long-term recovery: frequent respites might be more important to preserve well-being than the duration of one single recovery episode. Our results regarding the rapid fade-out of a positive vacation effect also accentuate the methodological importance of on-vacation measures in vacation research.”

We're not saying it...science is!