A staycation is a holiday spent in one’s home country instead of traveling abroad. It even means having to stay at home with a lot of fun activities and day trips to local attractions. In our busy and hectic lives, we all need some time off from the daily chores, stress, and chaos. However, time and cash flow might not allow you to take a trip to a far off holiday destination always. The holiday season is around the corner and a well-planned staycation could be just the thing you need.
Staycations have become more popular than ever. Many people are opting to enjoy their time off at home this holiday season. Opting to skip the cost and hassle of a traditional vacation. The benefit of a staycation is that it is both relaxing, fun, and easy on the pocket. If you want to manage your expenses while enjoying your time away from the office, this could give you both. With good execution, it could be a budget-friendly alternative to an overpriced flight, hotel and all other costs of taking a vacation.
Staycation Requires Planning!
Even though it might sound like an oxymoron, a staycation does require planning if you want to make the most out of it, this holiday season. Since you are not really traveling to a new place, it’s easy to fall into the trap. The trap of doing the same thing even when you are on your staycation. Getting sucked back into the daily routine or work like, “checking the email”, “arranging the closet”, or “doing the laundry”. You need to strategize your staycation for it to be relaxing, fun, and rejuvenating. With good planning, you can make sure that even if you are in your regular surroundings, you aren’t doing what you do in your regular life and make it feel like a real vacation.
To make things simpler, here’s a guide with 5 ways for you to enjoy your staycation this holiday season:
1. Be A Hometown Tourist
Whenever we visit a holiday destination, our goal is to sightsee and cover maximum attractions there. However, how much of that do we do in our hometowns? Hardly! The best way to make your staycation feel like a vacation is to behave like you are on one. Hire a full day taxi, and plan an itinerary to visit all the major attractions in your hometown. At least visit the ones that you never got the chance to see. Since the holiday season is here, you can’t find a better opportunity to behave like tourists in your own town.
Roaming around in your town or even outskirts by a full day taxi could be fun. At the same time, it gives you the opportunity to spend quality time with each other while enjoying the drive. All you have to do is sit in the back seat, munch on your favorite snacks and hop from one spot to another. “Savaari” is one such car rental company that offers its services in more than 6500 destinations covering 98 cities in India.
Their local taxi packages can help you explore the best places in town. Better yet, since we have collaborated with them, you can avail INR300 off on a minimum purchase of INR5000 of their services. All you need to do is use the code ‘SCOUT300‘ and avail the discount. Places to eat and drink at, your hometown’s greenest parks, majestic monuments, and oldest temples.
2. Go For A Fancy Picnic
Pack a blanket, your favorite finger food, a bottle of wine, juice or your choice of fizzy drinks. Find a lovely picnic spot at a local park or riverside. Go with your loved ones to have a fun-packed picnic. You can even carry something to play there, like a Frisbee, a ball or a pack of cards. If there’s a riverside or pool to dive in, don’t forget your costumes. The trick is to give yourself a break from your monotony. Do anything that can make it a fun day for you.
3. Unplug
The extreme level of dependency on gadgets and devices is something that we can’t get rid of how much we try to. But if you can try to achieve that at least during your staycation this holiday season, it could do wonders like you can’t imagine. If you can’t avoid it completely, at least make it a point to check your phones only after set intervals, that too for a very short span. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but you’ll be amazed to see how quickly you adapt to it.
Doing that will give you the opportunity to spend a lot of quality time together. It will definitely make your staycation worth it. It’s okay to binge something on Netflix together, but if any device is reducing the essence of staycation from it, and making it more of a usual day, avoid it!
4. Bike Ride
Take out your bikes and go for a full-day bike ride to explore the nearby scenery. If you don’t have your own bikes, rent them from any bike rental shops. There are a lot of bike rental services available online as well. Get ready to rent a bike of your choice. Apply your sunscreen, put on your sunglasses and ride out on that windy and exhilarating bike trip.
If you’d like some exercise along with the fun, get a pair of bicycles instead of motorbikes. You can ride out of your town where you can find a non-polluted atmosphere. You can look for biking trails or any roads with minimal traffic and abundance of nature should be good. Take a couple of breaks along the way to catch your breath, and enjoy the scenic view. Just experience nature together in a healthy way this holiday season. It could turn out to be relaxing and detoxing both.
5. Games and Tournaments
One of the best ways to make a staycation fun and exciting is by adding games to it. There are a lot of indoor games that you can play along with your family and spend hours doing that. There are multiple options of board games and card games, that you can plan and get in advance so that you can spend a day or more of your staycation doing just that. You can play tournaments with each game and set rewards like the winner gets to decide a particular meal to be ordered.
You can also make every night a movie night, where the winner of one tournament gets to pick the movie for a particular night, so on and so forth. In case you didn’t get the chance to pick a few cards or board games, with the blessing of technology there are a lot of multiplayer online games available. Games that can be downloaded on phones and played together. Yes, we did suggest unplugging on a staycation, but then, if it can be used for a positive purpose adding value to your staycation, why not!
It’s important to take vacations and enjoy sometime time off doing something you haven’t done before. However, it isn’t so much fun if you’re doing it at the cost of adding the stress of surpassing your budget or challenging your health and peace with too much travel, jet lag, and lack of sleep.
A Staycation allows you to achieve the same benefits as a vacation. It lets you do it without burning a hole in your pocket or letting it take a toll on your body. After all, the purpose of a holiday is to relax your mind, body, and soul. And if you can fulfill that purpose by planning a staycation this holiday season, go for it. You deserve it!
If you need help booking your next trip, Hire a scout! They will curate the perfect itinerary and ensure that you have a smooth journey as they virtually assist you throughout the trip. If you need any assistance, feel free to hit us up on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram.
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