It’s a tough pill for us to swallow, but we’ll take the hit: Almost half of the participants in a new study said that booking a vacation gives them a happier feeling than their wedding day.
The researchers questioned 17,000 people from 17 different countries and found that most respondents considered traveling to be more vital to their health than, well, pretty much anything else. Forty-nine percent of respondents said traveling makes them happier than their own wedding day, getting engaged (45 percent), going on a date with their partner (51 percent) or landing a new job (50 percent).
“The emotional lift that travel brings hits at each stage of the travel process from planning, through booking to actually going on holiday,” claims the study. “And it’s the planning stages that give the most immediate boosts in happiness, with nearly three quarters of people (72%) saying they get a kick of excitement just from researching where to go on holiday. Over half (56%) agree they feel happiest when booking their holiday.”
When is that happiness at its peak? Sixty-two percent of people said they feel a surge of happiness when they set their out of office email response and leave work, 87 percent are happiest on the first day of vacation and 83 percent say they’re happiest when seeing their accommodations for the first time.
Basically, planning the vacation is happy, anticipating the vacation is happy and the vacation itself is happy. We won’t argue with that.
