Welcome to the epicenter of summer—peak travel season. Other than that lovely timeless void between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, it’s the part of the year you’re most likely to be inundated with out-of-office emails. For younger workers, however, it’s lately become more popular to leave that particular auto-reply off and instead slip away for a day or two undetected—also known as “quiet vacationing.”

More than half of Gen Z workers and millennials are estimated to have taken so-called quiet vacations around the Fourth of July holiday. If that percentage seems a little high, well, bear in mind that previous reporting claimed a full third of office workers have become prone to quiet vacationing. While polling holds that the reason half these folks are carving out bonus PTO on the clock is because they’re nervous to ask for time off. A new survey suggests that quiet vacationing is not just about being chained to a desk—but also struggling with loud vacation anxiety.

Language-learning app Babbel recently surveyed 1,000 travelers from the U.S. about how they navigate their vacations. The eye-opening results in a report titled, The Rise of Travel Anxiety and How It’s Affecting American Travelers, reveal that “a staggering 69% of Gen Z travelers have canceled or changed their travel plans due to anxiety and a lack of preparedness.”

Much like a loaded suitcase in a freshly scrubbed hotel room, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Source of vacation anxiety

Part of the reason younger employees ultimately conclude that they’re not prepared for a vacation may have to do with spontaneous bookings. According to the report, 40% of Gen Z voyagers end up finalizing their travel plans within a week of taking a trip. It’s probably easier to psyche yourself out of following through on an impulse-driven vacation when it finally sinks in that you don’t speak the language of the destination city (something that 32% of Gen Z respondents cited as a source of anxiety), and not having enough money saved up (cited by 30% of those respondents.)

Another major driver of Gen Z anxiety around traveling is the impact such a trip might have on their relationship. According to the survey, 72% of this demographic reported having experienced relationship breakdowns due to vacation tensions—whether they had to do with getting lost, missing a flight or another kind of reservation, or getting in trouble with authorities in a foreign country. Traveling together has historically functioned as a significant test of a new relationship’s durability—and according to this survey, a lot of Gen Zers seems to be failing that test.

And for these younger employees, one of the most acute anxiety generators around planning vacations is . . . social media. 

Influencers play a key role in how many of them plan their trips—with 40% of Gen Z and 75% of millennials claiming to take their vacation cues from social media—so it’s only natural that they might feel compelled to emulate those influencers upon arriving. Anyone under the age of 30 in 2024 has grown up in a world where immaculately stage-managed vacation photos are practically inescapable. It’s no wonder then, as the survey tells it, that 41% of Gen Z and 49% of millennial respondents claimed it was important to create social media content while on vacation, which added to their stress and influenced their decision to cancel trips.

Social media’s stranglehold over these travelers’ vacation decisions is also evident elsewhere in the report. One of the more common sources of anxiety among all U.S. travelers is not being in the desired physical shape—with 24% of total respondents citing it. Apparently, the fear of squandering a perfect exotic backdrop with a supposedly subpar body is so intense that some folks would rather not take a trip at all than take one without thorough documentation.

Other factors

Obviously, the anxieties this survey mainly focuses on don’t paint a complete picture of why so many younger employees opt for PTO-free days off rather than going the far-flung-resort route. It’s a decision informed by many other factors. The economy remains in a precarious state, layoffs have hit hard in multiple sectors over the past year, and Gen Z is trying to enter a housing market that can often seem hostile to them. Given the general state of play these days, of course 38% of Gen Z survey respondents said they feel obligated to stay on top of work while on a trip—which has long been the main reason cited for quiet vacationing.  

But while financial and employment concerns convey part of the story, this new report on travel agitation adds important texture to it. Social media-induced anxiety has just been ambient noise throughout many young people’s entire lives—so it makes sense that it would factor into their travel plans. The pressure to perfectly represent a vacation to friends and family might help explain why some people feel the need to misrepresent a mini vacation to supervisors and coworkers.

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