Discussion — holidays at home vs holidays abroad

When planning a holiday, some people prefer to explore their own country, while others would rather travel abroad. This essay discusses both preferences before arguing that the better choice depends on what a particular holiday is for.

Those who holiday at home point first to cost and convenience. A weekend in a national park involves no flights, passports or currency, and the money saved can be spent on better accommodation or a longer stay. Domestic travel is also far kinder to the environment: a return flight from London to Bangkok produces more carbon than many people's cars do in a year. Perhaps most importantly, many people have never seen the finest parts of their own country; a Briton who has toured Italy but never visited the Scottish Highlands has, in a sense, skipped a chapter of their own story.

Advocates of travelling abroad argue that a holiday should stretch the mind. Ordering food in an unfamiliar language, navigating a foreign railway or simply watching how another society organises daily life provides a jolt of perspective that a familiar coastline cannot. Climate matters too: for those in cold, wet countries, a fortnight of guaranteed sunshine has real value for mental health. Cheap flights have also made foreign travel accessible to families who, a generation ago, would never have left their own region.

In my opinion, the two are not rivals. Short, frequent breaks are best spent at home, where the environmental and financial cost is low and the rest is real, whereas a rare, longer trip abroad is worth the expense precisely because it is disorienting. The mistake is to treat either option as inherently superior; a holiday should be judged by what it restores, not by how far one has travelled.