Summer vacations are a time for escape -- for a little R and R. They're also a time for learning and for generating fresh ideas. What's the best way to create a summer vacation that's eye-opening? Here are five veterans of great escapes who know what it takes to make the perfect summer experience.
President and chief operating officer
Harrah's Entertainment Inc.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Summer vacations are a time for escape -- for a little R and R. They're also a time for learning and for generating fresh ideas. What's the best way to create a summer vacation that's eye-opening? Here are five veterans of great escapes who know what it takes to make the perfect summer experience.
Early on in this job, I found it hard to take a real vacation. I couldn't turn off the stimulus that comes with the business. Ostensibly, I was on vacation. But I was constantly reading email, checking voice mail, talking to my secretary, and getting regular FedEx deliveries at our summer home. That style of vacation is a losing proposition. If you're getting sucked into the daily information glut back at the office, you can't be a decent participant in a family outing.
But I thought that I could. Then one day, my wife made a shrewd observation. Without seeing me use the computer or the phone, she could tell whether I had been working -- simply by interacting with me.
Since then, I've drastically cut back on the amount of communication that I have with the office when I'm on vacation. I haven't gone cold turkey, but I have set some limits. I also make sure that my employees understand that they can reach me, but communication should be kept to an absolute minimum. Most important, before I go on vacation, I ask myself, What does my family need from me on this trip? It may just be hanging around for enough sustained time that a teenager might actually tell you what's going on in her life.
The reality is that families of people like me make a lot of sacrifices. Selfishly, I'd like to say that vacations are all about me, because I work really hard for them. But vacations are also about the other people in my family.
Gary Loveman joined Harrah's Entertainment as chief operating officer in 1998 and became president three years later.
Chairman and CEO
Random House
New York, New York
I've found that the best vacations involve being active in the open air and reading only what I want to read, not what I need to read. While some people pack too many shoes, I'm guilty of packing too many books. I feel safer that way. If I don't have a book for every day that I'm on vacation, I feel anxious -- like someone who's about to run out of the essentials. So about a month before the vacation, I start to put together stacks of books from my favorite genres, including military history, thrillers, and serious fiction. The stacks keep piling up until the day of departure.
My vacation policy? When I'm gone, I'm gone. No email. No phone calls. No work-related updates of any kind. It usually takes three weeks to unwind completely. In the first week, my mind is still at the office. In the second week, I finally start to relax. By the third week, I'm in a different zone. And by the time I return to the office, I usually find myself in a kind of buoyant afterglow. I almost need to go back to work.
When you're the boss, liberating yourself from your work for a period of time is not just about taking some time off to feel rejuvenated. If you need a vacation, then your employees probably need a vacation from you as well.
Peter Olsen (polson@randomhouse.com) became chairman and CEO of Random House in 1998, when the book-publishing giant was acquired by Bertelsmann AG (Fast Company's parent company). Random House's U.S. division publishes more than 3,500 new books each year.
Cofounder and author
Lonely Planet Publications
Melbourne, Australia
The best vacations -- like the best trips -- offer an element of the unexpected. You can't seek out that which makes a vacation bigger and better. Ultimately, the magic finds you, if you let it.
Some of the best vacations that I've ever had were with my kids. As little people with a knack for bringing about the unforeseen, kids can make wonderful travel companions. They open doors for you. When you explore a place, either by yourself or as part of a couple, you're a tourist, and that's all you are. But when you travel with kids, you suddenly become a human being. You relate to and interact with local people in an entirely more approachable way.
I also think that a good vacation -- like a good guidebook -- offers a lot of variety. I like to combine aspects of the weird and the wonderful with the conventional. Maybe that means visiting two places that are extreme opposites: the far-flung little spot that no one has heard about and the popular big-city destination. Or I might stay in a 50-cents-a-night hotel, because that's the only place in town, and then on my next stop, splurge on $500-a-night hotel.
What wouldn't I do on a vacation? I couldn't spend a week sitting on a beach. The world is too big and time is too scarce to spend a whole vacation doing more of the same.
Tony Wheeler launched Lonely Planet 30 years ago with his wife, Maureen. Today, the company has more than 600 guidebooks that cover the globe.
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