This looks like the thread that never ends. So I’ll help keep it going.
A number of posts have asserted that Americans don’t travel because they don’t have enough vacation. It’s true that we don’t have the standard “holidays” seen in Europe. But we do have a fairly well established “standard” for vacation in most jobs. However, it is based on time in service and people who switch jobs a lot don’t necessarily build up vacation time. A schedule for 2 weeks a year for the first five years, building up to 4 to 5 weeks a year after 10 to 20 years is pretty common.
However, my experience (after about 35 years in the job market) is that many people, especially in professional jobs who have the money to travel overseas, don’t use up all the vacation they are entitled to simply because they are too involved with thier jobs. Having worked internationally for many years, I do believe there is a difference in the ability to “step away” from the job between Americans and Europeans. (Asians again seem different in that they are culturally prohibited from allowing their private lives to affect their business lives.)
None of this is necessarily good or bad, it’s just different.
First, the trend is for people to change jobs more frequently. This probably interferes with the accumulation of significant vacation time. Even if corporate policies provide for the accumulation of such time, I would like to see numbers as to how many Americans actually have been able to do so. I would guess that it’s actually a small percentage of management-level people.
I’d disagree that Americans choose not to take vacation because “they are more involved with their jobs.” This may be true for some proportion, but I’d think that a more significant number of people feel pressure not to take vacation from their employers or from the “workplace culture” which would punish them from taking all the vacation time they’re entitled to.
I guess it depends on your individual experience. I work in a professional firm where the “median” employee has been with the company over 15 years and has 4 weeks of vacation. Vacation is taken but, given the responsibilities, some people can’t take all the vacation.
Another factor perhaps not appreciated by Europeans is that international vacations (other than to South America) involves significant jet lag on both ends as well as large costs. If you can only go on a vacation for a week at a time, some people will only be fully functional for three or four days on a European or Asian vacation. It’s OK to make arrangements to be out for one week but trying to set things up for a two week absence is an order of magnitude more difficult if you really have a responsible job.
In our business, we really encourage people to take all their vacation. However, we discourage taking more than one week at a time.