Do you know what to do on National Plan for Vacation Day? If you do, you’ll save a lot of money on future travel, and I’m going to show you just how!
I know it’s hard to compete with National Donut Day and National Fruitcake Toss Day (January 3), but it’s still worth celebrating! Just as Valentine’s Day is your cue to reconnect with your sweetheart, National Plan for Vacation Day is your reminder to use up your vacation days.
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A whopping 600 million vacation days go unused each year in North America. Who does this? (The Huz notwithstanding.) I’m proud to say I’ve milked every company I’ve ever worked for out my well-deserved time off.
You might have caught my segment on CTV News at Noon today, discussing the best tips for turning vacation dreams into reality. If not, one efficient and unusual way to do this is to use a random holiday generator to find travel deals.
I wrote about that at length in this post, so cruise there if you’d like more information on how to quickly use a meta-search engine to find the best travel deals. That service is free!
Best value destinations for Canadians
And when we’re talking about finding the best value travel destinations, Skyscanner recently released their Canadian Travel Trends Report. It delved into the best value destinations when flying from Canada this year. They are:
- Havana, Cuba – down 28%
- Martinique -24%
- Lisbon, Portugal -22%
- Miami -21%
- Athens, Greece -18%
This means that flights to these exotic locales are approximately 20% less than they were last year.
How to find deals on the ground
Once you’re at your destination, you’ll probably want to keep costs in check. For attractions, my biggest piece of advice is to find discounts from the tourism website of the region or city you’re visiting.
Ottawa Tourism has a great section for its museums and attractions, as does Tourism Calgary. You can score up to 40% Calgary’s most popular attractions by visiting this site that I reveal here.
Winter long weekend getaways
The upcoming Family Day (President’s Day) weekend is going to be a super popular one. That’s because Valentine’s Day is on that Friday, before the long weekend. Forewarned is forearmed, my friends!
Weekend travel is a smart way to use up your vacation days – especially over a long weekend. You get all the benefits of the break, have something to look forward to, and it’s easier on the wallet. Sometimes, it’s just hard to get those longer holidays in, which is why mini-breaks work so well.
I found a fab deal at the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver. You could also stick around and have a staycation in Calgary. The Delta Hotel Downtown Calgary has attractive rates quite regularly —even on long weekends!
That Delta has a popular restaurant—Shoe and Canoe (go for the line-caught cod from Fogo Island!). You may not want to leave the property, but if you do, it is close to the East Village, Telus Spark, and the Calgary Zoo.
These rates are what you’ll get if you’re a Marriott Bonvoy member. It’s free to join. That’s another travel tip I revealed on-air. You can find excellent rates when a hotel is newly opened or has just launched a rewards program, like the Marriott Bonvoy travel program, which came out in 2019.
Do you have plans for a winter vacation this year?
