Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think Staycation means holidaying at home, not in your home country?

187 replies

IveSeenThings · 19/07/2020 14:29

I am seeing articles everywhere for the last few weeks - what to pack for a staycation Hmm, what to wear for a staycation, where to go for a staycation etc etc.
Staycation is a jokey euphemism for staying at home during your time off, surely? A bit like saying I'm going to Costa Back Garden, or Shaynoo etc
When did it become meaning having a holiday in Britain? (If you live in Britain!)
That's just called going on holiday... isn't it?

YABU- staycation means a holiday in the country you live in
YANBU- staycation DEFINITELY means staying at home not going somewhere

OP posts:
Amummyatlast · 19/07/2020 14:42

I agree that it means staying at home. Otherwise my holidays for the last 8 years have not been holidays.

Durgasarrow · 19/07/2020 14:43

Staycation definitely means staying at home. Not in your country!!

FishOnPillows · 19/07/2020 14:44

I thought it meant staying at home.
Taking a week (or however long) off work, and going out for day trips to attractions in your local-ish area.

TimeWastingButFun · 19/07/2020 14:44

I thought it meant staying at home and making it more holiday-ish.

Northernlass99 · 19/07/2020 14:45

I thought it meant holiday in your own country. That seems to be how the press are using it.

pigsDOfly · 19/07/2020 14:45

If you're going anywhere other than hanging around in you're home, you're going 'away' from home, even if it's only 50 miles up the motorway.

Surely a staycation means you're staying put and not going anywhere - the clue's in the first part of the word.

I think originally it was jokey, as you say, OP and meant staying at home during holiday time and yes, the meaning has changed.

EggysMom · 19/07/2020 14:46

I would agree that calling a holiday in your home country a 'staycation' demeans that holiday. Nope, if I'm away from my home at all then it becomes a vacation.

I did have a staycation a couple of weeks ago, I had great fun posting FB updates as if I were actually on holiday - what I was eating, what we'd done that day, etc.

Durgasarrow · 19/07/2020 14:46

If you're British, or American, for example, you live in countries that people spend lots of money to come and visit. So going to either one of those countries is definitely a vacation. If you vacate your home and you are vacating it to do leisure activities, that is a vacation.

If you're doing it to visit your intolerable relatives, however, THAT is an Oblication.

FishOnPillows · 19/07/2020 14:48

As an aside - I first remember hearing it after the 2008 crash, and thought it was an effort to help tourist attractions by encouraging nearby people to visit them, since people couldn’t afford to actually go away. Day trips are significantly cheaper then a holiday as there’s no accommodation or long-distance travel costs.

It doesn’t make much sense to mean “in the same country” from that point of view, as you’d still have the accommodation, meals out, and possibly long distance travel costs. It’s often no cheaper than going abroad.

excuseforfights · 19/07/2020 14:48

Staycation definitely means holidaying in your home country.

During lockdown it may have taken the meaning of holidaying in your home but it’s not the accepted meaning.

ImOnTheWrongPlanet · 19/07/2020 14:49

I always thought it meant taking 'time off' but staying at home.

I've always had holidays in the UK and they've just been called holidays.

Biker47 · 19/07/2020 14:49

Means having a holiday in your own country and not going abroad, to me.

steppemum · 19/07/2020 14:50

Until this year, I had always heard it used as staying in your own country.

But with COVID i think it has morphed more into staying at home.

Spidey66 · 19/07/2020 14:51

I always thought it meant staying at his me and doing touristy things in your area. Like I’m a Londoner, a staycation would mean the museums, theatres (not that they’re open yet), Camden market etc. Maybe day trip to Windsor etc.

I’m in Cornwall atm. That’s a holiday imo.

Spidey66 · 19/07/2020 14:53

Home not his me.

KoalasandRabbit · 19/07/2020 14:56

I always thought it means staying home and doing day trips to save money but seems to have changed to any UK holiday. I don't like the term either way.

Original poster
IveSeenThings · 19/07/2020 14:56

If I lived in Oakland, California and went to NYC for my holiday, it would hardly be a staycation would it? Even though I'm in the same country. I don't see how it can mean your own country.
People in France, for example, usually holiday in France, it's just what they do. They're definitely having a holiday.

OP posts:
pigsDOfly · 19/07/2020 14:57

@steppemum

Until this year, I had always heard it used as staying in your own country.

But with COVID i think it has morphed more into staying at home.

My take on it is the complete opposite Grin

I always understood it was staying at home during holiday time, but now that people can't have their usual holidays abroad because of Covid, it's come to mean having a holiday in your own country.

Original poster
IveSeenThings · 19/07/2020 14:58

And I agree, I first heard the term during the 2008/9 crash, meaning staying at home.

OP posts:
FelicityBeedle · 19/07/2020 15:00

It always feels a bit snobby if you use it to mean holidaying in your own country. As if a UK holiday isn’t a proper holiday compared to abroad

DontCallMeBaby · 19/07/2020 15:00

“I thought it meant staying at home and making it more holiday-ish”

This. Time off work, go for a nice day out, go out for dinner or get a takeaway.

It annoys the hell out of me. So belittling. All those camping trips and B&Bs in Blackpool before the days of cheap overseas travel that turn out not to have been a proper holiday at all, but something with a stupid twee name.

And an Americanised name at that, when I strongly suspect that a Texan spending a week in New England would consider that a proper vacation, not a fucking staycation.

okiedokieme · 19/07/2020 15:00

Staycation used to mean having a holiday at home eg going on day trips, meals out but without staying away however for the last few years it means staying within the U.K. even if it costs far more than the average package tour.

KoalasandRabbit · 19/07/2020 15:00

I'm the same Pigs - I wonder if it varies regionally how it was used before lockdown. I was in London and it was staying in London at home to me and doing trips into London. If you were going to Devon, Cornwall, Norfolk or wherever that was a holiday in UK.

okiedokieme · 19/07/2020 15:05

But remember it's used almost exclusively by posh people who have already been for a ski trip and and couples break to the Caribbean when referring to "slumming it" in a £1500 a week cottage in Cornwall, whereas to mere mortal a trip to a caravan in Skegness is a holiday! For the record I'm not going abroad, I'm staying at friends house but I call it a holiday or break, staycation, just no

safariboot · 19/07/2020 15:08

I'm with you. The original meaning, made clear in sources from 2005, was for staying at home.

Using it to mean holidaying in Britain is a more recent UK usage and I don't like it. I agree with others, it sort of implies that the a holiday should be leaving the country and not doing so somehow doesn't count. Yet industry figures show most British people take at least some of our holidays in the UK.