Visiting a new and different destination came out tops in a recent poll into Australians’ travel resolutions for 2008, conducted by online travel company www.Expedia.com.au.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of the survey’s 5,000 respondents chose visiting a completely new and different destination as their number one New Year’s travel resolution; interestingly, however, only 4% of respondents chose making all future trips carbon neutral as their number one travel resolution for 2008.
Eastern Europe topped the list (28%) of desired destinations in 2008, with South America coming a close second (24%). While Southeast Asia continues to wane in popularity, with only 16% of respondents choosing this as their destination of choice, Africa is emerging as a popular hot spot, with one in five Australians citing that continent as their destination of choice for 2008 (21%).
When asked what resolution they would aim to keep while travelling, 40% said they aim to “try something adventurous”. One in five respondents said they aim to travel to see a friend they haven’t seen for a long time, while keeping a travel log/blog or trying to speak the local language of a destination also ranked high on the list of what Australians said they would try to adhere to while on their travels in 2008.
However, and as a sign of apparent end-of-year fatigue, the survey showed that what Australians appear to be in need of most right now is some serious R&R. When asked what holiday activity they would like to try, “doing nothing” and “just relaxing” was quoted by almost a third of respondents as their number one travel “activity”. As further evidence of Australians’ apparent state of exhaustion, over 34% chose a relaxing spa holiday as their holiday of choice in 2008.
With a hectic year over, kicking back and relaxing is also reflected in the most popular domestic holiday destinations for 2008. The Whitsunday Islands secured over a third of the vote (35%), while Tasmania came second in the local destination popularity stakes (23%).
When asked what bad travel habits they would like to break, spending over the allocated holiday budget came up as the number one resolution (37%) for 2008. (Surprisingly, over a fifth of respondents said they didn’t have any bad travel habits to break.)
The results of this latest www.Expedia.com.au poll echo the findings of Expedia’s global Vacation Deprivation survey™ released earlier this year, which showed that among the six industrialised countries surveyed, Australians were found to be the worst in the world at taking holidays, with more than a third of employed Australians not taking all of their annual leave.
A Report by The Mole
