First Class Cabin Fever

It’s that time of year again when the holiday suggestions are popping off in the group chat and the satisfaction of plugging your days off into your boss’s calendar begins. But if you want to maximise your travel this year or any year, the dates that you choose can make all the difference. Travelling like a pro is not only an art, but also a science.

Let’s take a closer look.

Don’t let a bank holiday pass you by

National bank holidays are a great place to start. A full list of bank holidays in England and Wales in 2024 is as follows:

• Friday, 29 March – Good Friday
• Monday, 1 April – Easter Monday
• Monday, 6 May – Early May bank holiday
• Monday, 27 May – Spring bank holiday
• Monday, 26 August – Summer bank holiday
• Wednesday, 25 December – Christmas Day
• Thursday, 26 December – Boxing Day

Tap into your company’s flexible work policies

In addition to bank holidays, you’ll want to factor in any perks that are unique to your company. Do they offer wellbeing days, volunteering days? ‘Early Finish Fridays’ in the summer? Work-From-Anywhere schemes? These are all invaluable when it comes to squeezing in as much travel as possible. Days off that may be unique to your company are also a great way to avoid the price hikes often associated with travelling on and around national bank holidays.

If any of this is raising alarm bells as to the flexibility (or lack thereof) of your employer, check out the best companies with flexible working policies in 2024.

Make your schedule work for you

A great way to optimise travel days is to select flight times that suit your schedule – for example, do you usually find yourself winding down, answering emails and making plans for the week ahead on a Friday afternoon? Why not spend your Friday lunch break travelling to the airport, where you can set up shop in a café and finish off that pesky to-do list before boarding the plane for a weekend away?

Time-blocking is a great method for optimising your calendar in this way – for example, I try to group my meetings and phone calls together on chosen days, and similarly block time for deep creative work and more admin-focused quick ticks. The back of a taxi on the way to the airport may not be the best place to conceptualise a new marketing campaign, but it may suit just fine for certain administrative tasks. There will always be things that we can’t account for and some jobs are more unpredictable than others, but asserting some control over your schedule and ‘when certain tasks will get done’ is a powerful practice.

Sample breakdown – how I plan to use my annual leave in 2024

I managed to carry 5 days over from 2023 by – you guessed it – being very savvy with the trips I took last year! I knew I wanted to attempt some ‘bigger ticket’ journeys further away this year that would require more days off.

Everyone’s situations are different, but here is just a flavour of my plans for this year utilising 30 days of annual leave.

• March – long weekend with a Friday afternoon flight, Monday company wellbeing day and £30 return Wizz Air to Vienna (0 days annual leave)
• March/April – Easter Weekender, grabbing a bargain for a few days away (0 days annual leave)
• April – 12 days exploring/surfing in Sri Lanka (8 days annual leave)
• May/June – 8 days in the Azores utilising the Late May bank holiday (4 days annual leave)
• June – Off to Glastonbury! (2 days annual leave – no, I’m not going to suggest joining that Teams call from the pyramid stage).
• August – 16 days in Portugal; 5 days working remotely and 7 days at surf camp (5 days annual leave)
• September – 3 weeks exploring Japan and South Korea – with 5 days of remote work (10 days off)
• December – I’ll only be taking 1 day off this festive period, the 27th December – this will still give me a solid 5 days off to spend with family and friends however we choose! (1 day off)

And there you have it! I plan to be jet-setting around the globe and enjoying my hard-earned time off for approximately 70 days this year utilising only 30 corporate days off. It’s not going to break the bank either, more on that in future posts…