What Is a Workation? How Remote Workers Turned Travel Into Part of the Working Year

What Is a Workation? How Remote Workers Turned Travel Into Part of the Working Year

Almost half of Australian workers have taken a working holiday, according to a 2025 survey of 1,000 people by the travel insurer Insure&Go, and about one in three bosses said they approved of the practice. The figures are from a single market, but they describe something now common across countries where office work went remote: people taking their regular job with them to somewhere else for a week, a month or a season.

The word for it, workation, began as marketing shorthand. It has since become a recognized arrangement with its own logistics, visa categories and housing market. Understanding how it works, and where it fails, matters both for the employees who try it and for the companies deciding whether to allow it.

A definition

A workation is a period spent working normal hours from a location chosen at least partly for leisure. It differs from a holiday, because the job continues, and from digital nomadism, because the traveler usually has a home to return to. The typical workation lasts from one week to a few months and is organized around the same tasks, meetings and deadlines as any other working period.

The arrangement depends on two conditions. The job has to be one that can be done remotely, and the employer has to accept that it is done from somewhere other than home or the office. The first condition has been met for a large share of office work since 2020. The second is less settled. Many companies allow remote work from a home address but restrict work from abroad because of tax, payroll and data-security rules, which is why some employees take workations within their own country.

Why demand has held up

Remote workers have shown little interest in giving up flexibility. In Buffer's 2023 State of Remote Work survey, 98 percent of respondents said they would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers. Workations are one of the ways that preference is used.

At the more mobile end of the spectrum, MBO Partners counted about 18.5 million American digital nomads in 2025, roughly 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, of whom about 11.2 million held traditional jobs with an employer. The same study found that nomads were staying longer in each place, an average of 6.4 weeks in 2025 compared with 5.4 weeks in 2023. Many people who take occasional workations follow the same logic: a longer stay leaves room for a normal working week as well as time to see the place.

Who takes them, and how

The roles best suited to workations are those built around a laptop and a predictable set of meetings: software development, design, marketing, finance, consulting and writing. Analytical work that requires concentration rather than presence travels well. Jobs with heavy customer contact during fixed hours travel less well, especially across time zones.

How the time is structured matters more than the destination. Workers who keep their usual hours, protect a block of focused work each day and plan sightseeing for evenings and weekends tend to report the arrangement as sustainable. Those who try to fit work around a holiday schedule usually find that both suffer. A short trip of a few days is mostly consumed by travel and settling in, which is one reason workations of two weeks or more have become common.

The workspace is the most frequent point of failure. A hotel room or holiday rental is rarely set up for eight hours of work a day. A table at the right height, a supportive chair, natural light, a quiet corner for calls and a connection that has actually been tested are the minimum. Experienced travelers ask for a recent speed test before booking and carry a backup, such as a local SIM card.

Governments and housing have adapted

Governments have created legal routes for longer workations abroad. The 2025 Global Digital Nomad Report by Global Citizen Solutions evaluated 64 countries and found that 91 percent of the nomad or remote-worker visas it tracks were launched after 2020. Spain ranked first in its index, followed by the Netherlands, Uruguay, Canada and Czechia. For stays beyond the limits of a tourist visa, these permits are now the standard route.

The housing market has followed. Furnished apartments rented by the month, with a workspace and reliable internet, occupy the space between hotels and conventional leases, and they are the natural fit for a stay of several weeks.

The case for Europe

Europe has become a common choice for workations, particularly for North Americans, because of the combination of dense cities, short travel distances and lower living costs. The difference with large U.S. cities is substantial. Crowd-sourced data from Numbeo show consumer prices excluding rent about 42 percent lower in Barcelona than in New York, and city-center rent for a one-bedroom apartment of roughly €1,490 a month in Barcelona against about €3,970 in New York. A regular cappuccino costs €2.89 in Barcelona and €5.81 in New York on the same site.

Cities such as Valencia, Porto and Split offer similar advantages at lower prices still, along with established coworking scenes and good rail or air links to the rest of the continent. Time zones are the main constraint: a workation in Southern Europe leaves a narrow overlap with colleagues on the U.S. West Coast, which suits some roles and not others.

A permanent feature of remote work

Workations are unlikely to become universal, since many jobs and many employers will continue to require a fixed location. But for remote employees whose companies allow it, they have become a regular part of the working year rather than an exception. The arrangements that last are the ones treated as work first, with travel built around them.

For stays of a month or longer, RentRemote lists furnished apartments in cities including Barcelona and Valencia.