Skipping the summer holiday: the choice that still embarrasses

Holidaying at home: the antisocial answer to travel pressure

Why does everyone ask whether you're going anywhere? Anyone who decides to stay home over the summer faces an interrogation mixing curiosity, pity and a hint of contempt. Some dodge the question, some lie about exotic destinations, and some — a current that is growing ever less silent — just say it outright: I'm not travelling, I don't want to, I don't feel like it.

The economic logic of the staycation

Spending forty days at home is a decision with overwhelming logic: it avoids the tourist markup of July and August, the crowds and the stress of travel. In a country where the extra pay packet evaporates in two weeks at the beach, the zero-spending plan comes across as almost subversive. The savings are not a detail: they are the central argument of those who turn the sofa into their destination and the gym into their outlet.

Status as a burden

The real problem is social. Travel remains the status marker par excellence: whoever stays home is branded antisocial, boring or, worse, poor. That is why the provocation that "travelling is for the poor" — travelling badly, going into debt to get in the photos — is gaining ground over mass tourism. And in the office, the holiday double life is commonplace: plenty of people lie about their destinations to gauge their position in the workplace hierarchy. That dissociation is the clearest symptom of a culture that punishes staying home to rest.

Meanwhile, the one who stays behind works out, builds muscle and spends nothing. Perhaps they don't need a holiday to escape reality: perhaps reality, without tourists and without queues, is what they're really after. And if the interrogation is awkward, so much the better: more sun loungers free for them.