Updated: May 2025
Can you believe it’s been eight years since I wrote this post!? I figured it was about time I updated it!
Eight years later, I’m still travelling as often as possible while holding down a full-time job. And these days I even have a dog to look after and think of, too.
Many of you will know that despite taking an average of between 12 and 15 trips per year, I have a full-time job working in media.
I only work on my blog and freelance writing projects on my evenings and weekends.
Yet, with just 25 holiday days, I average 12-15 trips per year.
So, wanna know how? Let’s go!
The Story Behind My Travels & Job
With a love for travel, I always knew that when I finished University and entered the workforce in 2012, I would have to be very careful with my holiday days to make the most out of them.
Over the years I’ve had a lot of questions about how exactly I travel so regularly while holding down a full-time job. Because I don’t work in travel, or in an industry or company that requires a lot of work travel.
In 2016, the year before I first wrote this post, I took 15 trips, including visits to; Paris, Thailand, New York x2, Antigua, Milan, Lisbon, Geneva, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, and Australia.
Last year, in 2024, I took the following trips for vacation: St Lucia, Wales, NYC x2, Peru, Cornwall x2, Margate, Rhodes, Bali, Australia, Isles of Scilly, and Paris. And then I also took a few work trips, visiting Washington DC, South Carolina and Florida, and then also visiting South Wales a few times for work.
So it’s safe to say, that after almost 15 years of writing this travel blog and 13 years of travelling while working full-time, I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to maximising your holiday days.
Let’s get into how you can maximise those vacay days…
There are multiple ways I take so many trips in a year while having a full time job, and a lot of it is just being really smart with the holiday days, weekends, and public holiday days.
I’m very lucky that I live in the UK, where 25 holiday days (+ 8 public holidays) is the standard. I know in the US you get a lot less vacay days from work, so it’ll be harder there. But you can still use these tips to help!
1. Use Weekends & Public Holidays
I’ve always been very smart with my holiday days and public/bank holidays.
I quite often take a Friday or Monday off work, or take off the days either side of bank holidays.
Say it’s a public holiday on a monday, you could even book the following four days off as annual leave, and then fly out the friday evening before the public holiday, and fly home again the sunday evening after the public holiday. You’d then have a total of 10 days of holiday but take just 4 days of holiday!
A great example of using public holidays wisely was my recent five day solo trip to Walt Disney World in Florida.
I flew to Orlando from London on Thursday morning, the Friday was a public holiday for Good Friday. I then flew back to London on the Tuesday, and because the Monday was the Easter Monday public holiday, I got 5 nights at Disney but only had to take 2 holiday days off work!
Just make sure you book the days off work far in advance, because often companies have rules where not everyone can be off at the same time, and naturally public holidays are prime times for people taking vacay days.
2. Visit Multiple Countries In The Same Location
Another thing I love to do is visit multiple countries that are in the same location.
I did this in 2023 when I visited Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia all in the same trip. We spent 5-days roadtripping between the three countries and it was truly epic!
Another great example of this was my Asia trip in 2017. In one week I visited Singapore, Cambodia, and Hong Kong.
Singapore was a long stopover, so I had a night there and the 5 hours to see Singapore. I’ve been to Singapore numerous times before so I just saw the main sites, but I pretty much saw everything (apart from Sentosa and Little India).
I’m just not a fan of staying in one place for an entire week unless I’m just chilling out on a beach. I like to always be on the move.
I then had 2 nights in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, and 3 nights in Siem Reap where Angkor Wat is located.
After that I flew to Hong Kong and had 2 nights to explore Hong Kong. Again, I’d been to Hong Kong before so had already seen a lot of the touristy stuff.
This style of travel isn’t for everyone, but I love it and love being on the go as I find it just makes the whole trip feel like more of an adventure!
3. Make use of stopover cities
This brings me nicely onto…stopover cities!
If you’re going somewhere further away and there are no direct flights, or if an indirect flight is cheaper, make the most of the stopover opportunity!
I’ve visited Singapore, Amsterdam, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, NYC, and more, simply by adding a stopover to my trip.
Sometimes one or two nights in a stopover city is a great and cheap way to visit a new place and get a feel for whether you’d like to spend a longer amount of time in a country or city.
4. Work in Offices in Other Cities
I’m very lucky that every company I’ve worked for has been a global company.
This has allowed me to work days in offices in other cities around the world to reduce the holiday time needed.
So say I fly into a city on a Wednesday evening because the flights are cheaper. I then work in the office on Thursday & Friday, can use my lunch breaks and evenings to explore and enjoy the city, have the weekend there, take the Monday off as a holiday day to enjoy an extra day there, and then fly home Monday evening or Tuesday morning when the flights are much cheaper.
I’ve done this before in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sydney, Rome, and more.
I also did this when I lived in Australia and flew from Sydney to Perth for Easter – I had the long Easter weekend off, my birthday day off, and then worked in our Perth office for 3 days.
This meant I could go back to Perth to see family and friends, but only had to take 1 holiday day to have 9 days, and two weekends there!
If you’re an expat, this is a really great technique.
When I was an expat in Sydney, I also used it to maximise my time visiting family and friends in the UK.
I worked from the London office for three weeks when I was back in London in July 2017, as all my friends and family work full-time anyway, so I worked and then saw them all in the evenings and weekends!
It allowed me to go back home using just four holiday days (the 3 days I needed for flying, and then one day off to go and visit my grandma in Wales for a long weekend), but have 3.5 weeks there and all those weekends and evenings to catch up with people!
5. I Take Red-Eye Flights
I’m one of those weird people who can sleep anywhere.
I fall asleep in cars, on boats, on trains, and on planes pretty easily.
Because of this I tend to take red-eye flights, so I’ll work a full day in the office, then get a taxi to the airport and get on a 9pm flight somewhere.
Because I’ve been working all day I’ll be tired and ready for sleep as soon as I get on the plane!
Depending on time difference and the flight time, I’ll then either land in the afternoon/evening/morning, and be ready to get some more sleep or hit the ground running.
And I take red-eye flights even if I don’t have enough airmiles for business or first class – yep, I’ll sleep in an economy seat too!
6. I Go Into Work Straight From The Airport
Similar to taking red-eye flights, this is another one some people just can’t handle.
I won’t lie, I don’t tend to do this much anymore because I find my thirty-something body can no longer handle it as well as my twenty-something body could.
But back in the day in my twenties, I’d often take a red-eye flight from overseas or Perth, land in Sydney around 7am, and go straight into the office ready to start work at 8:30am.
With most companies these days having WFH and flexi-hour policies, it means that if your flight gets in at 8am or 9am meaning you won’t get into the office or get home until 9/10ish, you can then just work through lunch or work late to make up the time.
Even in my 20s this one could sometimes be really tough, especially when I went straight into the office after travelling for 30 hours from London.
But I did find that it helped loads with jetlag.
Instead of going home at 9am and wanting to shower and fall asleep, it forces you to stay awake until the evening so it gets your body back into your normal routine and body clock pattern.
But like I said, I don’t tend to do this anymore unless I absolutely have to.
This is one that’s definitely more doable in Europe or the US than it is in Australia, but I love a weekend trip!
I take a lot of little weekend trips that require no holiday days, whether they’re overseas or within the UK.
Each year I even do an ‘extreme day trip’ to Paris, where I get the 7am Eurostar to Paris from London, and then get a late evening train home the same day. I love my annual summer solo day trips to Paris and it’s something I look forward to every year!
8. Take advantage of work trips
If you have to go on a work trip or attend a conference overseas, you can often request that your flights are booked so that you get extra time before/after the work portion of the trip.
When I was working for Amazon this technique worked great because you could request the dates you wanted, then you would book the hotel through work for the work part of the trip, then you would just book a separate hotel for the personal part.
It was this technique that meant my work paid for my flights to/from Seattle and Boise for my big Rocky Mountains trip after I was finished with the Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle back in 2023.
I’ve also done this before where say you need to be overseas for work on a Monday, you can request that you fly the Friday before, and then you have the weekend to explore and adjust to any timezone differences before work starts on the Monday.
9. Plan in advance & use a spreadsheet
I think the key to maximising holiday days is to plan way in advance and be super organised.
I use a spreadsheet to list out the places I want to go, how long I want to go for, and how many holiday days I need for each trip.
This then allows me to see how many holiday days I have left (if any), if I’ve planned too many trips, and allows me to fit it all in.
Otherwise, if you just plan and book as you go through the year, you might end up with no holiday days half way through the year…or it might be the opposite, where you have loads of holiday left and have hardly done anything!
Personally, I usually have a rough idea of where I want to go the year before, and then I’ll book and plan out each trip during the Christmas/NY holidays at the end of the year, for the following year.
So as an example, my friend Sophie and I knew last year after our girls trip to St Lucia that we wanted to do another Caribbean trip in 2025. As soon as the January sales hit in 2025 we booked to go to Antigua in the November.
10. Don’t waste holiday days on sick leave!
Some people don’t realise that their company actually gives you specific, allocated sick days, as well as time off for doctors appointments etc.
Instead, they use their holiday allowance to take the time off for this.
No. Do not do this.
Most companies have a different leave allocated for these situations, so you don’t need to take holiday time. Ask your HR team within your company what their different leave policies are.
For example, some have holiday/vacation leave, sick leave, and compassionate leave. A lot of companies will also allow you to take an hour or two out of the day for a doctors or dentist appointment, as long as you make up the time by working through lunch or working late.
Use this!!! Do not waste your holiday days on doctors appointments, pleeeeease!
11. Maximise time between jobs
And finally, make the most of the time you have when you’re between jobs!
If you’re starting a new job, ask if you can have 2-3 weeks between finishing your old job and starting the new one, so you can travel and take a longer trip.
I’ve done this a few times and it always works great.
When I left my job in Sydney to move back to London and join Google, I took a few weeks out in-between to island-hop the South Pacific Islands, visiting Vanuatu, Samoa, and Fiji. Then I also visited friends in Perth and Dubai before starting at Google.
Likewise, when I left my job at Havas to move to Amazon, I spent 3 weeks doing a round-the-world trip to Singapore, Australia, and Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, before starting the new job.
Exhausting, but worth it
My travel style can definitely be exhausting at times, and I only tend to take one or two ‘relaxing’ slow-paced trips a year compared to multiple other fast-paced trips, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
The key is to make sure you have completely empty weekends either side of the weekends that you travel, to ensure you have proper rest and downtime so it doesn’t impact your work or your health.
But, it allows me to travel as much as possible while working a full-time job.
Although it sometimes costs me a lot more money because I’m limited with the dates I can travel, I love my job and my routine far too much to ever give it up for full-time blogging/travelling!
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