Americans love taking vacations. Whether it’s winter skiing trips on snowy mountain peaks, summer snorkeling vacations in oceanic wonderlands, road trips to national wonders, or jet-sets to far-off locations, there’s a vacation for every budget and preference. Here are some interesting facts that you may not have known about vacationers.
Only Americans call it vacation.
Americans go on vacation, accumulate vacation pay, and vacation on distant islands. Brits and Australians go on holiday, accumulate annual leave, and go abroad (even if it’s to the country next-door). In America, the term “vacation” came about when wealthy folks, such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Carnegies were said to be vacating their city homes for their summer homes.
Vacations used to be something different.
Although Americans are largely the only ones using the term these days, the term originally pertained to long summer breaks taken by law courts in the United Kingdom, and then later, to the summer break at universities.
Vacations have only been around for two centuries.
In the early 1800s, the wealthy started taking vacations or summer leaves—sometimes for their health and possibly also for the purpose of courting.
One-Third of Americans Travel at Least 50 Miles
A survey by AAA in 2016 estimated that around 35 percent of Americans were planning to take a family vacation to a destination 50 miles or more away from home sometime in the next 12 months. They said that road trips, national parks, and theme parks were the most popular types of vacations.
Americans Prefer Beach and Water Vacations
Another report, done by Expedia, said that nearly half of the Americans surveyed said they had taken a beach vacation in the past year and two-thirds said they were likely to take a beach vacation sometime in the coming 12 months.
One-Third of Americans Go Boating
Yet another survey of 116.7 million American households found that almost one-third of these households had participated in recreational boating sometime in the previous year. It also found that California and Florida had the highest number of households engaging in boating, quite likely due to the plentiful sunshine.
Vacations are here to stay. So if you’re one of those Americans that prefers a beach or water vacation, a houseboat rental on Shasta Lake might be just the thing for you. There are no sharks or jellyfish, but there are miles and miles of shoreline providing private coves for swimming, sunbathing, and camping.