Americans Got To Enjoy Only Half As Many Vacation Days As Europeans In 2014

Surprise! Europe is winning at life again. Expedia's annual Vacation Deprivation Study -- which randomly surveyed 7,855 employed people across 24 countries in Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and South America -- found that in 2014 Europeans got to enjoy almost twice as many vacation days as Americans. According to the travel planning site's informal poll, the median number of vacation days allotted to Europeans was 28 days, and workers tended to take advantage of all or most of these. On average, residents of Denmark, France, Germany and Spain who spoke with Expedia said they vacationed for 30 of their 30 available vacation days this year. Austrians, Norwegians and Swedes took 25 of 25 days, U.K. residents took 25 of 26 and Italians took 21 of 28. Americans, on the other hand, took an average of 14 of the 15 vacation days offered to them. And while this looks like a sorry state of affairs when compared to Europe, Expedia says it's actually an improvement from last year, when Americans took only 12 of their 14 vacation days. But Americans apparently don't feel like they're being deprived of vacation time. Expedia found that only 54 percent of Americans polled said they were “very or somewhat vacation deprived." To put that into perspective, people from the United Arab Emirates were the most likely to feel vacation deprived (73 percent), even though they reported taking 30 of 30 available vacation days. "Americans seem to see vacation as a guilty pleasure. The sa...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news