Forget the annual holiday: Gen Z is choosing micro-vacations instead

It is a Wednesday afternoon and Chetana Bisht, 25, is probably already thinking about her next trip. A consultant by profession, she has been to Thailand and Malaysia in the last three months, with completely different groups of people.

For her, the question of whether to take one long annual holiday or several short ones isn't a question at all. "Multiple trips, always," she says, with the assurance of someone who certainly knows what she's going to do next.

She is not alone. A new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of Airbnb among more than 2,000 young Indians across 11 cities found that seven in ten Gen Z travellers would rather take three short trips a year than one long holiday. Most prefer trips lasting under a week. Perhaps it is the promise of certain Friday nights turning into spontaneous trips.

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Ask a room full of Gen Z-ers about their ideal vacation and you will get, roughly, three different philosophies. There are the scattered-breaks people, the hold-out-for-one-big-trip people, and the deeply pragmatic quarterly-vacation people.

Aaliya Shalla, 27, a senior social media executive, belongs firmly to the first camp. "I need a break every two to three months," she says. "Even if I take one long break, it won't suffice for the entire year. I'll still need a break after two to three months." There's no drama in that statement, just the calm arithmetic of someone who knows how she's wired. The year is long, and one holiday cannot carry its full weight.

Sanskriti Seth, 24, a counselling psychologist, agrees, though she comes to the same conclusion differently. "I'll get bored if I take a longer break," she says. It sounds odd at first but makes complete sense when you consider that for many people, the value of a holiday is the contrast it provides, not the duration. Stretch it too long and the relief starts to curdle into its own sort of restlessness.

Tanishqa Mathur, 24, a project analyst who recently travelled to Gujarat with her family, chooses to take a vacation every quarter. Efficient, regular, non-negotiable. Jyoti Thakur, 24, a freelance journalist back from Shimla, votes for scattered breaks too, with regular intervals of joy planned every few months. Only Ananya Agarwal, a growth analyst, holds out for the long vacation. A woman of conviction.

Bed rotting, but make it scenic

Fewer people are manifesting their Julia Roberts in Bali. The aspiration has changed, bearing in mind the rigidity of corporate culture, and the will to be freer, more often.

Gen Z, it turns out, isn't travelling more because it wants to do more. Two in three survey respondents said they travel simply to do nothing. To rest, to slow down, to stay in. Sixty-four per cent deliberately leave parts of their itinerary blank.

On TikTok, creators document what they're calling microtrips, of about 24 to 72 hours with no agenda beyond the vague intention of feeling like a person again — and the comment sections are full of people tagging their friends with a single question mark.

Then there is the question of who you take with you, which Gen Z has strong feelings about. Three in four travellers said company matters more than destination. More than half would rather split one beautiful house than book separate hotel rooms and maintain the polite fiction of personal space.

Sanskriti, who skipped a two-day Karnataka resort trip with her colleagues and has somewhat been regretting it since, is an inadvertent case study in exactly this. Green hills, a lake, people you actually like. It is easier to feel better than we think.