Four weeks of holidays not enough? Move to France

If you hate having to work while schools are on holiday, a survey shows you would be better off in France.

An online survey of workers in 11 countries by travel company Expedia shows New Zealanders took an average 18 days of annual leave in the past year - half of the average 36 days in France.

But New Zealanders still took slightly more holidays than Canadians and Australians and roughly twice as many as Japanese and Americans.

The survey measures the days of leave actually taken by samples of 500 to 1500 people in each country.

It shows much bigger variations between countries than legal minimum provisions, which are a standard four to five weeks' leave in 23 out of 27 OECD nations. The minimum is four weeks in New Zealand and five weeks in France.

Marie Dalou, who worked for an insurance company in France before coming to Auckland with her engineer husband Arnaud Lancry three years ago, said French workers who worked more than the legal 35-hour week were required to take longer holidays.

"In France I worked 38 to 40 hours a week. I think in the end I had about seven weeks [annual leave]," she said.

"Normally people are accumulating hours ... and sometimes it is just too much, in fact. Sometimes people get the feeling that they are not working enough to finish what they want to finish, to achieve what they want to achieve."

She said the leave gave her and her husband more holidays with their daughter Clara, 8.

On the other hand, they both had to work longer hours during the week. Ms Dalou worked until 6pm or 7pm and her husband started work at 7am.



In Auckland Ms Dalou works part-time for Eurodis, a company importing French foods, so she can be home for Clara after school.

"We are spending less holidays together because at the moment she's on [school] holidays and I'm working, but in the everyday life we see each other much more than in France and that is better for us," she said.

At the other extreme, American immigrants Heather and Ron Vail, who moved to Rotorua last year, said people who got even two weeks' leave in the United States were lucky. The US is the only OECD country with no legal minimum holidays.

"Most people would wrap [leave] around a holiday or long weekend such as Christmas, Thanksgiving or the Easter break. If you took a week at a time you were kind of going way out," Mrs Vail said.

The Expedia survey found 45 per cent of New Zealanders did not use all of their annual leave, a higher proportion than any other country except Japan.

Half of the Kiwis surveyed said they wanted to carry over leave to use the next year and a third said they were too busy to take time off.