INDIA - Indians suffering from vacation deprivation, survey claims

The article “Indians suffering from vacation deprivation, survey claims”, written by Himanshi Dhawan and published by the Times of India on 7th°November 2014, describes the deprivation of holidays and the reasons why people end up taking less days off then they would be allowed to in India. It starts off by claiming that India came out to be the fourth most holiday deprived nation of the world, with 40% of the people not being able to plan holidays in advance. Indian people also rank fourth on feeling guilty about taking holidays, with 67% stating this. A five city survey by Expedia found that there are differences within the country. People from Delhi took the most holidays while people from Mumbai took the least. One reason people don’t take that many holidays is that they don’t feel like they get enough days off at work. The average number of days off per year in India is 19.6, but many take fewer days off than they actually receive with an average of taking 15.5 days off a year. The main reasons why people don’t feel like they can take any holidays are a work schedule or a personal schedule that doesn’t allow enough time to take holidays. People also said that they wanted to save days in order to take a bigger holiday the following year, hoping to get money in exchange for unused days off or having problems with coordinating a date that would work for themselves and their family, friends or partners. Vikram Mahli, an Expedia MD Asia says that holidays are important to maintain a good work life balance and employees can stay more focused and happy at work after re-energizing. Funny enough, India is also one of the top three countries in which people stated that they would be willing to make sacrifices in order to gain more holidays.

What we have to say about this:

What are the most common Indian holiday destinations and what is their general mentality towards holidays? And how much does our mentality towards holidays and the destination we chose here in Basel differ from the ones in India? Most Indians do not go on holiday or go but not as long as they would be allowed to, because they don’t like to miss work or for any of the reasons mentioned in the text above, a personal schedule that doesn’t allow for work, having problems coordinating with friends and family, wanting to receive money in exchange for unused days off but also for saving up days for a larger holiday the next year. When Indians do go on holiday, they mostly chose destinations within India and neighbouring or close countries like Nepal, Thailand or Singapore. This is because most Indians don’t like to leave their work for a long time since they feel guilty when they do. When they leave Asia, their most common choices are the U.S. and Canada or London, Paris and Switzerland. We presume that the reason why they chose to visit Switzerland might be because many Bollywood movies have been filmed in the Swiss Alps and that Switzerland is a great contrast to India. Most Indians prefer to travel by bus, since it is much more affordable than travelling by train or by plane.
Here in Switzerland people have a very different attitude when it comes to holidays and very different destination, too. Most Swiss people go on a holiday (about 11 to 14 days) once a year, some go twice and about 20% either don’t go at all or go three times or more. The most common Swiss destinations in the winter (we have a big skiing culture here) are the Swiss, Austrian and German Alps. During the rest of the year most Swiss people prefer to travel to warm places. The top destinations are Spain, Turkey, Italy and the Canaries. Most Swiss people spend up to 2’000 Swiss Francs per person for transport and accommodation. The most commonly used transport is by plane or by car. In Switzerland, we usually don’t view holidays as something you should feel guilty of. We enjoy taking a break from work and everyday life in general. Holidays are viewed as a time to get together as a family, to relax and to slow down before returning back to the things we have to do on a day to day basis. Some people also use them as a status symbol in order to show of their wealth to others. This might be a total opposite to Indian culture. We think that work is seen as something important in India and that this might also be a reason why people feel guilty when they take a leave from it. One reason that surprisingly didn’t come up in the article was the financial reasons for not going on holiday. This reason is present her in Basel, although most people can afford to go away, but some might not be able to afford destinations that are too far away. In fact, ten percent of the Swiss population cannot afford to go on holiday ever. /M.P./M.A./S.H./