Relax! Why fly and flop holidays rule

We’ve never been under so much pressure to make the most of our time away, but what’s wrong with just chilling out on a beach? Nothing, says Laura Fowler

Blame Covid. Blame climate change. Blame overtourism. Blame Ben Fogle. But most of all, blame social media. A “holiday” just doesn’t cut it these days. The trials of modern life are putting us under increasing pressure to “make travel count” and turn every trip into an achievement.

Before Instagram, holidays were a private business. You disappeared from the office and returned a week later with a tan, a Toblerone and, if your colleagues were lucky, the briefest of anecdotes.

Now we are bombarded with friends’ real-time bucket-list experiences and awareness-raising adventures, with photographs of the Michelin-starred meals eaten, orphanages visited and Himalayan peaks conquered (#givingback #blessed).

Easter’s airport queues and port chaos may have upped the “adventure” quotient somewhat, but those aren’t the anecdotes that make your trip stand out from the crowd. We are now uncomfortably aware of how our every choice – of holiday destination, hotel, outfit, photo filter – frames us in the public eye. Pity the middle-class mumfluencer who can no longer enjoy a week’s all-inclusive in the Algarve, lying by a pool drinking pink cocktails while the kids drip Cornettos down their natural-dyed linen rompers. Go Naoshima or go home.

Once this spate of flight cancellations and delayed departures is over and things are approaching “normal” once more, we’ll be in more need than ever of a holiday which is exactly that: a holiday. The old-fashioned sort, when a beach, a book and a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic was just what the doctor ordered. In fact, right now – at a time when nobody is getting enough sleep and everybody is suffering from burnout, stress and anxiety – this sort of holiday is precisely what the doctor would order.

Rather than being ashamed of the “fly and flop” and all its implied cetacean laziness, surely we should be embracing it as a cure for this worldwide malaise, particularly after these past two years. We might see it instead as a “life detox”, a go-slow wellness retreat from frenetic everyday life, whether that is with friends, partner, family or solo, where R&R is the entire point and we don’t feel obliged to traipse around historic ruins or improving museums. What could be better for our mental and physical wellbeing and a sunnier state of mind?