How to maximise your long weekends in 2024?

Here’s how to plan your leaves, pack your bags and basically a mini-guide on how to squeeze in more travel time in 2024.

Long weekend—two words that can make any traveller perk up from behind the desk and look optimistically at the calendar. With more people planning their travel bucket list in advance to look forward to their adventures throughout the year, here’s how to plan your leaves, pack your bags and basically a mini-guide on how to squeeze in more travel time in 2024.

Ideally, you would want to plan around a weekend where you have both Saturday and Sunday off clubbed with a festival/annual holiday if possible.

Check your workplace’s time-off policies: Before you get on to your laptop and start ogling those cheap flight tickets or hotel discounts, it is important to understand how paid time off and annual holidays are observed in your workplace. Every company has their calendars and based on your country, holidays that they observe and offer leave for. Ideally, you would want to plan around a weekend where you have both Saturday and Sunday off clubbed with a festival/annual holiday if possible.

Choose a destination that is easy to get to: Even if you have managed to grab a bundle of 5-days clubbed together in a fortunate month, keep the destination close, and a planned itinerary closer. Nothing can be worse than getting a long week to roam around worry-free and then inviting the nightmare of not having a plan to use the time wisely. The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen—choose a destination that is within driving distance or if you are taking a flight, make sure you have a round-trip booked in advance.

Plan an extended day of work before your extended long weekend: The idea here is to take out a day where you can not only complete all the pending work and wrap up ongoing projects but also get ahead of it. This ensures that when you are back, you don’t have to follow the corporate slogan of “diving right back in” to work.