I've always been a planner when it comes to travel. But I was never particularly good at vacation.

On a seven-day trip, my brain started plotting reentry on day five (okay, day four). Every moment was planned, and a free window felt like a wasted opportunity.

I've been wondering whether some of us are still traveling with habits we developed when vacation time was scarce. So I went looking to see whether anyone had studied what happens when we overplan our time away.

They have. In 2024, researchers at Breda University of Applied Sciences and James Madison University published a study in the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research titled “The Best Experiences Cannot Be Planned.” They surveyed 376 working Germans and interviewed twelve at length. People inclined to maximize their vacations could end up less satisfied with them. The searching and comparing created doubt and raised expectations, both of which worked against satisfaction afterward.

It's possible to try too hard to have a good time.

A week in Italy

For most of our working lives, maximizing a vacation made perfect sense.

Vacation days came in tightly rationed blocks. If you had a week in Italy and didn't know when you'd be back, you wanted to make it count. Rome, Florence, and maybe Venice. Book the restaurants and get the museum tickets.

Many of us are entering a different stage of our traveling lives. We have more control over our calendars now, and we can stay another night or come back. I'm not sure we've changed the way we travel. We've gained time and filled it with more things.

The two-hour window

Gabriela Tonietto and Selin Malkoc, marketing professors who study how people spend their time, published thirteen studies in the Journal of Marketing Research on what happens when we schedule leisure. In one, they gave students cramming for finals a ticket for free coffee and a cookie. Half the students picked a time. The other half got a two-hour window. The students with a window enjoyed the break more. The students with a set time were nearly twice as likely to show up. Everything they tested was short, a movie or a coffee break, and they are careful to say the effect may not hold for a whole trip.

That's not an argument against planning. Some things must be booked, and I'm still going to make the dinner reservation and buy the museum ticket. It's an argument for leaving some unplanned time.

The armrests at Café Sperl

On our last day in Vienna this summer, we had tickets to tour the Austrian Parliament. There was a special session, and public tours were canceled. We got as far as the entrance, were asked to leave, and started walking back toward the hotel to decide how to fill an afternoon we had not planned for.

On the way, we passed Café Sperl. A friend had recommended it weeks earlier, and we had skipped it because the reviews were mixed. We went in this time.

Café Sperl opened in 1880 on Gumpendorfer Straße, and the room has changed very little since. Parquet floors, marble tables, milk glass lamps, red damask banquettes gone soft in the seats. I sat in a chair whose Thonet bentwood arms had been worn through the varnish to bare wood.

We stayed two hours, reading about noted painters and artists who started frequenting the spot in 1895, some of whom went on to form the Secession. The owner gave them a marble tabletop to draw on. The drawings were wiped away each night when the tables were cleaned.

We hadn't planned a minute of it. It's the afternoon I remember best.

We flew home the next morning.

Now I'm reminded to keep at least an afternoon empty and not reserve every meal. If we're somewhere we don't want to leave, we won't head out just because the itinerary says it's time.

For much of our lives, the scarce resource in travel was time. Now I'm beginning to think the scarce resource may be empty time.

by Paul M. Rand, Founder and Editor of Nomadic Spirit