How to Make the Most of Your PTO: A Travel Planning Guide for Busy Couples
You have a travel wish list, you have PTO, you theoretically have the money you've been setting aside to actually take a vacation, and yet somehow another year goes by and you find yourselves saying, “How did we barely travel this year?”
If that sounds familiar, the problem probably isn't that you need more vacation time, you may just need to get more strategic about using the time you already have.
I work with a lot of busy professional couples, and one of the first things I want them to stop doing is thinking every vacation needs to be The Big Trip.
You know the one. Two weeks in Italy. Japan. An African safari. Australia. Antarctica. And yeah, those trips are incredible, and I absolutely want you to take them! But if you're waiting until your schedules magically align for two uninterrupted weeks before you allow yourselves to go anywhere? You might be waiting a while.
Instead, I like to look at your PTO as a travel calendar.
A three-day weekend can become four nights somewhere fantastic.
A strategically placed holiday can turn four PTO days into a nine-day vacation.
A random week in October might actually be a better time to visit Europe than the July dates everyone else is fighting over.
And when you do have 10 or 14 days available? We protect those dates and start talking about the destinations that truly deserve them.
Here's how I'd think about it 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
If You Have 3–4 Days: Don't Waste Half Your Vacation Getting There
I LOVEEEEEE Europe. I do not love Europe enough to recommend flying there for a long weekend.
When you only have a few days available, the goal shouldn't be to squeeze a weeklong itinerary into 72 hours. It should be to choose somewhere that allows those 72 hours to actually feel like a vacation.
That usually means prioritizing:
Easy flight schedules
Nonstop flights when possible
Minimal transfers after arrival
One hotel
A destination where you don't need an elaborate itinerary to enjoy yourself
This is a great opportunity for a city getaway, wine country weekend, resort stay, spa escape, or a few nights somewhere with incredible food. Think: Mexico City. New Orleans. San Diego. Napa or Sonoma. A fantastic resort in Mexico or the Caribbean.
The exact destination matters less than the logistics.
If you're leaving work Thursday, I want you enjoying a cocktail somewhere interesting on Friday, not spending Friday taking three trains to reach the place you actually came to see.
Best for: Long weekends, birthdays, quick anniversary trips, spontaneous getaways, or those moments when you both realize you desperately need to leave town.
If You Have 5–7 Days: Pick a Place and Actually Experience It
This is where travelers get ambitious. You have a week! Surely you can see Rome, Florence, Venice, Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast! Please don’t do this to yourself. I’m begging you.
A week gives you enough time to go farther, but that doesn't mean you need to go everywhere.
For international travel, I generally prefer choosing one city and its surrounding region or two destinations that connect easily.
You could combine Lisbon and Porto, spend several days in Dublin before heading into the Irish countryside, choose one region of Italy rather than attempting a grand tour of the entire country, or unpack once on a river cruise and let the scenery come to you (my fave!).
The goal is to avoid spending your limited vacation constantly checking out of hotels, dragging luggage through train stations, and learning the layout of a new city just in time to leave it.
Remember that seeing more places does not automatically mean having a better trip. Sometimes seeing less is exactly what makes a vacation feel luxurious.
Best for: Europe when the logistics are simple, river cruising, a focused food-and-wine trip, a Caribbean vacation, or combining two nearby destinations.
If You Have 8–10 Days: Now We Have Options
This is one of my favorite travel windows! You have enough time to build a trip with some variety without needing to disappear from work for half a month.
For Europe, this could mean two or three thoughtfully chosen stops: Rome, Florence and Venice can work beautifully when the itinerary isn't stuffed with every attraction you've ever seen on Instagram.
Portugal becomes much easier to explore beyond a single city. You could pair city time with countryside, beach, wine country, or another completely different experience.
This is also where the pace of the trip becomes important.
If you're both coming off several months of intense work, you may not want nine days of sightseeing, maybe we front-load some touring and end somewhere you can relax, or we alternate structured days with open ones.
Maybe your perfect vacation has absolutely nothing scheduled before 10:00 a.m.
There isn't one correct itinerary, just an itinerary that's correct for you.
Best for: Multi-city European trips, more immersive destination travel, milestone trips, food-and-wine itineraries, and trips combining sightseeing with relaxation.
If You Have 10–14 Days: Protect Those Dates
If both of you can get 10–14 days away from work at the same time, I want you to treat those dates like the GOLD that they are! This is where destinations with longer flights and more complicated logistics start making significantly more sense.
Japan.
Thailand or Vietnam.
South Africa and safari.
Australia or New Zealand.
A longer European itinerary.
Antarctica.
These are destinations where I'd rather not have you spend 20+ hours traveling in each direction only to turn around a few days later.
More time also gives us flexibility to design a trip that isn't operating at maximum speed from the moment you land!
And here's the important part: You don't need to know where you're going before you protect the time.
Sometimes the best email I can receive from a client is: "We both got these two weeks approved next year. We don't know where we want to go yet."
Perfect! We have the most difficult part figured out. Now let's find the right trip.
Best for: Long-haul destinations, bucket-list travel, safaris, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Antarctica, and more complex itineraries.
Use Holiday Weekends to Create More Vacation From Less PTO
This is where I want you to pull up your work calendar before everyone else in the office starts submitting vacation requests.
Look at where the holidays fall.
A Monday holiday combined with four PTO days can potentially create nine consecutive days away from work! A strategically placed Friday can turn an ordinary weekend into a four-day getaway. The days between Christmas and New Year's can be incredibly valuable depending on your company's holiday schedule.
This isn't groundbreaking mathematics, but you'd be amazed how many people don't think about their travel until they decide where they want to go.
I prefer reversing that.
Find the windows first. Then figure out which trip fits them.
That one shift can make planning significantly easier.
Stop Automatically Traveling During Summer
If you don't have children in school and your work schedule doesn't require you to travel during summer, I have excellent news: You don't have to!
In fact, for many destinations, I would rather you didn't! I am a HUGE lover of shoulder season travel.
Depending on the destination, spring and fall can mean pleasant weather, fewer crowds, more hotel availability, and an experience that feels completely different from peak summer.
For Europe in particular, April, May, September and October can be fantastic months to consider. There are obviously exceptions. Weather patterns, seasonal closures, events, wildlife, river conditions and what you actually want to experience all matter.
That's why I don't subscribe to one blanket “best month to travel.”
The better question is: What's the best time for YOU to experience this particular destination?
Sometimes that's July, and sometimes it's absolutely NOT July.
Don't Use Every PTO Day on One Giant Vacation
If your company gives you a finite number of vacation days each year, it can be tempting to save every one of them for your biggest trip, but I encourage couples to think about the rhythm of their entire year.
Maybe your travel calendar looks like:
A four-night getaway in spring.
A bigger 8–10 day international trip in fall.
A long weekend around your anniversary.
And a couple of PTO days deliberately left unclaimed for when life gets exhausting and you suddenly need to go somewhere.
You don't necessarily need six vacations, but you also don't need to wait 11 months between them. Travel can be part of your life instead of an annual event you spend the rest of the year waiting for.
Not Every Trip Needs a Reason
You don't need to wait until your 10th anniversary.
You don't need a milestone birthday.
You don't need to have survived an especially terrible quarter at work.
You don't need to call it a honeymoon, babymoon, retirement trip, birthday trip, graduation trip or anything else.
Sometimes you've both been working too much. (My husband and I are both guilty of this!)
Your conversations have slowly become a combination of work, errands, household logistics and deciding what you're having for dinner. You realize you've been sending each other travel Reels for six months without actually going anywhere.
That's enough of a reason to take the trip.
Travel gives you the opportunity to step outside the logistics of your everyday life and experience something together again. Sometimes that's two weeks in Japan, sometimes it's four nights in Mexico, but either way, they both count.
Plan Your Travel Calendar Before You Plan Your Trips
If you want to travel more, here's what I want you to do before you choose a single destination: Sit down together with your calendars.
Look at the next 12–18 months and identify the windows when traveling could realistically work.
Where are the three-day weekends? Could either of you take Friday or Monday off? Where could you reasonably take a full week? Are there any periods when work is predictably quieter? Do you have a 10–14 day window that could support a bigger international trip?
Are there anniversaries or birthdays you'd like to celebrate somewhere other than home?
And equally important: When can you absolutely NOT travel?
Once you know that, you'll have something much more useful than a giant bucket list! You'll have a framework.
Maybe you discover you have:
4 days in February
Perfect. Let's find a getaway.
7 days in May
Now we're looking at a completely different category of trip.
10 days in October
Hello, Europe.
Two full weeks the following spring
Okay. NOW let's talk about that Japan trip you've been saving on Instagram for three years.
Suddenly, “We want to travel more” becomes an actual plan.
Your PTO Is Valuable. Treat It That Way!
This is ultimately why I care so much about planning travel around time.
My clients are busy. When two people with demanding careers finally manage to coordinate their schedules and get a week away together, those days matter.
I don't want you wasting them fixing preventable logistical problems, spending three days changing hotels because an itinerary looked more exciting with five destinations instead of two, and I definitely don’t want your vacation becoming another project you have to manage after work for the six months leading up to it.
You don't need to know exactly where you want to go before reaching out to a travel advisor.
In fact, sometimes I'd rather you didn't!
Bring me the calendar, bring me the PTO window, and DEFINITELY bring me the giant list of places you've been saying “someday” about.
Then we can figure out which one makes sense now!
You probably don't need more PTO to travel better, you need a better plan for the PTO you already have.
Ready to figure out where your next window can take you?
