Group holiday research warning

27 November 2014 09:37

Spending too much time planning a break on your own can lead to conflict with your travel partner

Spending too much time planning a break on your own can lead to conflict with your travel partner

Stop! Hold it right there before you get too deep into researching your group or family holiday.

That's the message coming loud and clear from a study which finds that too much holiday research can actually end up harming relationships.

Research from the University of Cambridge shows that couples who decide to jointly plan a holiday can go awry, when one person gets carried away and books parts of a trip without consulting their partner. The same applies for groups of friends who decide to take a trip.

With so many websites available to compare and contrast different elements of a holiday, from travel insurance to accommodation, researchers say that members of the 'Tripadvisor generation' can fall into the trap of 'over searching'.

This can turn the process from a joint decision taken by couples or families into one individual trawling the internet in pursuit of the best deals.

People who make decisions about a holiday based on their own individual research without asking the opinion of their travel partners risk upsetting other members of the group and alienating themselves before the trip has even begun.

Similar mistakes can also be made in the workplace when someone selecting job applicants following hours of online research could end up making a decision that upsets their colleagues, the study finds.

The report is published in the latest edition of the journal Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

How to organise a group holiday

- Consult early and often with your partner or holiday companions

- Arrange times when you're all free to meet up so you can do your research together

- You don't all have to be in the same room. Take advantage of video calls and Skype to plan together from different places.

- If it's just not possible to research at the same time, be sure to communicate regularly with emails, phone calls and texts, updating your companions on your progress.

- Sending weblinks will come in handy to allow your companions to catch up.

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