Should employers be required to provide paid vacation days to their full-time employees? It depends on where you live. For most countries with advanced economies, the answer is an obvious yes.
Not here. In the United States, the standard agreement is two weeks (if you’re lucky) of paid vacation time each year, which is still low compared to our peer countries. For 25% of American employees — 28 million people — the number of annual paid vacation days is zero.
In today’s online world, the postcard is losing ground to cheaper, more instantaneous and farther-reaching units of communication. It now competes with text messages, tweets and status updates. It can’t keep up. Yet, the personal postcard will never lose its appeal. There’s nothing quite like receiving a small piece of paperboard art with a handwritten note on the back. I’ve found that imagining the recipient’s reaction to a postcard I’ve sent is just as fun as receiving one.
On the spot, I added up my countries visited. The total came to 23. Compared to the general population, that’s probably above average. But within travel culture and for someone who has dedicated her adult life to travel, it’s pretty low. For me, it’s just right. Here’s why I’m okay with my modest number.
I’ve come across a survey about how important travel is when it comes to happiness. Of the 2,321 people surveyed, an impressive 71% agree that traveling is more vital to their happiness than retirement, having a baby, buying a car, getting married, being promoted, and purchasing a home. Other interesting findings from the study: traveling is more important to women than men.
Carbon offsets are imperfect, complicated, and highly debatable. Skeptics point out that they resemble the medieval Church’s selling of indulgences in the sense that they don’t actually require a change in behavior. In my opinion, in the absence of any real legislation/taxation that demands us to pay closer to the “true cost” for our flights and other inevitable emissions, carbon offsets are the best tool we’ve got for compensation.
According to a Dutch study on travel and happiness, tourists gain the most satisfaction from travel during the pre-trip phase. Anticipation, it seems, is a more powerful factor of travel happiness than the actual travel experiences or recollections of them. What makes the pre-trip phase the happiest? I’ve noticed that, for me, trip planning is the purest phase of travel.
This feels a little bit like Christmas and a birthday back-to-back. What started out as a 12-day mainland Ecuador trip has doubled into an extra ten days of Galápagos Island exploration. Here’s what I know about the itinerary so far:
This post was originally published by my friend Carlos Buj from Spain. He’s a tourism industry progressive and blogger at ‘Viaje a la Sostenibilidad’. I’ve translated this post from Spanish, so you can see the original post here: 10 verdades incómodas sobre el turismo sostenible y la sostenibilidad. Thanks, Carlos, for the real insights and critiques.
