When you hear the word, “vacation,” what springs to mind? Exotic locales? First class airline seats and luxury hotels? Poolside lounges? Or camping? At Yellowstone or fly fishing in Montana? Shopping quaint shops along cobble-stoned streets? Ziplining through a rain forest? 4-star dining someplace in Europe? White sand and azure sea someplace there’s white sand and azure sea? A cruise? Time to do nothing? No work, or emails, or cellphones? Yeah, me too. I was thinking about it because July and August are kind of the traditional big vacation times.
The word “vacation” evokes different things for different people but its roots are Latin. Vacāre, meaning “to be free or have leisure.” The word “vacation” kind of semantically meandered its way from Latin to Olde English to French, and back to English again, where it was initially defined as a “time of contemplation and freedom from cares.” Works for me.
Anyway, a meaning much closer to today’s branding and marketing definition, “a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation,” came into use in 1868. That’s when Boston preacher and conservationist, William Henry Harrison Murray, aka “Adirondack Murray,” took a 9,000-mile hike around the entire Adirondack Park and then wrote a book and a series of articles about his trek. It popularized outdoor recreation and created a turning point for leisure time. 
His book is cited as changing common parlance to use “vacation” instead of the traditionally used British “holiday” for people “vacating” their city homes. The wealthy and the elite – back then mostly from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia – followed Murray’s accounts of the great outdoors with great interest, vacated their cities in droves, and exchanged the heat and humidity of the cities for the crisp, cool air of the Adirondacks and, for the first time, “took a vacation.”
Modern travel brands could learn a lot about marketing and customer experience engagement from Mr. Murray, so desirable did he make time in the great outdoors sound. Not only did the Adirondacks become the backyard of the rich, but ordinary city folk would travel on specially scheduled railroad trains upwards of 40 hours just to get there! Mr. Murray romanticized (some might say, “over-romanticized”) the experience, which just increased consumer expectations and engagement with the vacation concept and experience.
Oh, and increased propensities to take time off . . . just to take a walk in the woods. That said, vacationers (who, for reasons that will become rapidly clear, were known as “Murray’s Fools”) – wait for it – weren’texpecting the bears, bats, or bobcats. Or coyotes or skunks. Or black flies, mosquitos, or poison ivy. You know, actual nature. Weren’t expecting any of that. People were looking for – and expecting – a contemplative, care-free time, and, with pretty high (albeit new and clearly untested) expectations related to a better/easier/safer way to experience all that nature.
And that’s when vacation infrastructure started to shift. By 1873 there were over 200 “Great Camps” built in the Adirondacks. Railroads realizing they could get people, not only to the mountains, but to the shore as well, figured as long as they were expanding the rail network, they could tame nature – and the vacation experience – at the same time. So, they built railway hotels so people could vacation in style. And comfort. Sans bears and/or black flies. Within 50 years over 3,000 camps, hotels, and resorts were built. Vacations – and services related to travel and time-off – continued to morph into pretty much what we have today. Even trains.
As to where folks are currently taking vacations, national pride notwithstanding, the United States is the third most popular travel destination worldwide. The top-10 international vacation spots rank like this:
- France
- Spain
- United States
- Turkey
- Italy
- Mexico
- Great Britain
- Germany
- Greece
- Austria
But here’s the thing. When it comes to vacations, it’s actually domestic leisure travel that historically accounts for the lion’s share of consumers’ travel-spend in this country. Upwards of $758 billion, with vacationers flocking to these cities:
- New York City
- Miami
- Orlando
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- Las Vegas
- Washington. D.C.
- Chicago
- Boston
- New Orleans
We include a lot of categories and brands related to taking vacations in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. And this year these are the travel-related brands with the most-loyal customers:
On-Line Travel: Expedia
Airlines: Delta
Hotel (Economy): America’s Best Value Inn
Hotel (Mid-Level): Drury
Hotel (Upscale): Omni
Hotel (Luxury): Ritz Carlton
Car Rental: Enterprise
Gasoline: ExxonMobil
Ride Share: Uber
It’s a big world out there with lots to do on vacation. But happily, consumers have the time to avail themselves of all those vacation-related options. Around a third of Americans enjoy two to three vacations a year. On average, American workers get 11 days paid vacation per year, usually increasing to 15 days after five years of service, upwards of 21 days after ten.
But when it comes to vacation timing, here’s some advice that seems to make a lot of sense: A vacation should be just long enough that your boss misses you, and not long enough for him or her to discover how well he or she can get along without you! Oh, and yeah, avoid the bears!
Anyway, I’m going on vacation.
Have yourself a fantastic break. I’ll see you after Labor Day.
Photo by Daniel Hansen on Unsplash
