Published 4th May. 2026
Written by Amy Larsen
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When’s the best time to book a holiday for maximum happiness? We’re glad you asked. New behavioural science research conducted by Professor Paul Dolan (nicknamed the ‘Professor of Happiness’) and Alina Velias of the London School of Economics suggests the sweet spot is roughly four months before you travel. This supports our long-held concept of ‘Anticication’ – the idea that simply looking forward to a holiday can be a significant contributor to wellbeing. Intrigued? Read on to find out more about the holiday happiness sweet spot...
Growing evidence suggests that those with a holiday planned (this is your cue to check your calendar) report higher levels of happiness than those without a trip booked. Studies of UK and European households show that people with an upcoming trip tend to score higher on life satisfaction in the months leading up to their departure. Simply put: a booked trip means boosted happiness.
Image by Faustine Poidevin
Booking your trip around four months in advance seems to be the travel sweet spot. Professor Dolan, author of best-selling books including Happiness by Design and Happy Ever After, has studied the optimal travel window. He researched happiness levels among individuals anticipating holidays between two and six months in advance, as well as panel data measuring wellbeing four to six months before departure.
‘The happiness hit of a holiday is not just from the time spent away but also comes from looking forward to going away’ says Dolan. ‘These anticipatory benefits require a degree of psychological proximity, so that the trip feels near enough to savour’. The takeaway? Four months is the magic number.
Image and header image by Miren Alos
Turns out you can put a price on holiday happiness. Using HM Treasury’s Green Book guidance – which assigns a monetary value to marginal changes in life satisfaction – the joy associated with anticipating a holiday equates to around £6,000 per person per year. With a four-month holiday countdown, that equates to just over £2,000 per person, or roughly £500 per month.
For a family of four, the wellbeing value associated with anticipation could therefore be more than £2,000 per month – meaning the experience begins delivering value long before departure. You could (at a stretch) even claim that the satisfaction felt by a family of four for an £8,000 holiday booked four months in advance effectively rendered that holiday ‘cost neutral’, given the family’s £2,000 emotional return per month. What a win.
Image by Ludovic Jacome / Getty Images
For our co-founder, Tom Barber, the story behind the study began when he first met Dolan not on safari in South Africa, but sheltering from the rain at a festival in Suffolk, watching the Lions beat Australia at rugby.
‘We got talking, and didn’t stop for the duration of the match, much to the annoyance of our friends who were actually trying to watch rugby’ says Barber. ‘His highly regarded work on happiness and health, combined with my own (long dormant) psychology degree, meant we ended up discussing travel, anticipation and much more. Out of it came a shared desire to delve deeper into the psychology of travel.’
Image by Pie Aerts
This will be the first of a series of science research studies that Original Travel will be conducting with Professor Dolan on the Psychology of Travel.
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