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Your ‘perfect’ family holiday could be making you miserable, UAE experts say
Experts noted the pressure to maximise summer breaks can leave parents exhausted, children overwhelmed, and couples arguing over who did the work
- PUBLISHED: Sat 15 Aug 2026, 6:00 AM
A five-star hotel, a packed itinerary, and hundreds of holiday photos may look like the perfect summer break, but they do not necessarily translate into a happy family holiday, UAE wellbeing experts said.
As families pack their summer breaks with destinations, activities, and experiences, psychologists and wellbeing specialists say the pressure to make every day count can sometimes defeat the purpose of taking a holiday in the first place.
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Dr Rita Figueiredo, clinical psychologist and managing director of Peninsula Psychology, said holidays can increasingly become an extension of how people see themselves, and how they want others to see them. “Travelling kind of highlights or compounds all the other factors that create pressure in people's lives."
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Figueiredo said she sees an “optimisation mindset” in which people feel that because they have spent a certain amount of money or taken a limited number of days off, they should be achieving a particular emotional payoff.
“I spent this much, so I should be this happy. I took these days off, so my partner and I should reconnect, or we should create memories for our children."
The result, she said, is that a holiday can become “an extension of my identity” with people questioning what their destination, activities and photographs say about their lifestyle, family and financial status.
When a holiday becomes a performance
Social media can add another layer to that pressure, although Figueiredo cautioned against blaming social media alone. “It’s not social media per se, but the psychological impact of that: the comparison, the high standards, this idea of optimisation."
She described holidays as increasingly “performative”, with families not only experiencing a destination but also thinking about how that experience will look to others.
Over twenty years ago, she said, people might have travelled primarily to spend time with family, experience a new culture, or simply get away. Today, there can be an additional question: How will this look?
“What does that say about me, what does it say about the status of my family or myself?”
That pressure can influence decisions as basic as where to travel, she said, with some people potentially choosing an option that looks more impressive over one that would actually suit their family better.
For expatriates visiting home, that can mean trying to see parents, siblings, extended family, and friends within a short period because they do not know when they will next return.
“People describe returning from visits home feeling deeply connected to their families and completely exhausted."
The invisible work behind the ‘perfect’ holiday
For some families, the biggest source of tension may have nothing to do with the destination. Figueiredo said she frequently sees couples where one partner, often the woman, becomes the “project manager” of the holiday.
That can mean booking flights and hotels, checking passports, planning activities, organising children's belongings and deciding what everyone will need.
“The person who put on the work is angry,” she said, describing a recurring pattern in couples therapy.
The other partner may feel that they paid for the holiday or worked long hours to make it possible, while the partner doing the planning feels that their own work has gone unnoticed.
“It feels that, at some point, for example, when most commonly the wife says, ‘How come you believe that we’ve been having the same holiday [every year]?’” Figueiredo said.
Both partners, she added, can end up feeling alone because neither fully sees what the other contributed.
Dr Hanadi Al Jaber, a family wellbeing coach, said this “invisible labour” can undermine the very rest a holiday is supposed to provide. The person handling the planning and organisation continues carrying a mental load throughout the break, she said.
“If the results are not what was expected, they can end up carrying the full responsibility with her family throwing accusations like: ‘You wanted this, you chose this’."
Al Jaber said responsibility should instead be shared, with both partners given opportunities to rest and recharge. “If the holiday is supposed to be a holiday, the goal is to let the family rest, not make someone work,” she noted.
More activities do not necessarily mean more fun
Another common mistake is trying to fit too much into too little time, Al Jaber said. Families can become focused on visiting the maximum number of places and completing as many activities as possible, rather than considering how the experience actually feels.
“The quality of a holiday is not linked to the quantity of activities,” she said.
Packed schedules can increase stress and exhaustion among both parents and children, leaving families with less capacity to enjoy what they are doing.
A child may forget the specific activity, she said, but remember the feelings associated with the experience. “If the schedule is very packed with activities, the level of stress and exhaustion rises."
The pressure can be even stronger when families are trying to create the kind of holiday they have seen other people enjoying online.
Al Jaber said families should instead ask a basic question before booking: 'Does this actually suit us, or are we doing it because we are comparing ourselves with other people?'
Children may want something much simpler
The pressure to provide children with an “ideal” holiday can also lead parents to spend heavily on experiences their children may not actually value.
Al Jaber said parents sometimes assume they know what their children need, without asking them. “They believe that when they provide their children with the ideal holiday, they have given them the best thing."
Her advice is to ask children, in an age-appropriate way, what they would most like to do.
The answers can surprise parents, she said. Children may simply want to swim together, play together or eat together.
The important psychological benefit is also making the child feel that their voice has been heard.
For families with more than one child, she recommends setting expectations in advance and teaching children that everyone’s preferences matter - rather than allowing one child to dictate the entire holiday.
Some families are happy to keep it simple
For Shahed Mardini, an Abu Dhabi mother of two, the ideal summer holiday is not necessarily an overseas sightseeing trip.
She travelled with her husband and two sons to Syria this summer primarily to spend time with relatives, something she has come to associate with the longer summer break.
“I always prefer the long summer holiday to be with family,” she said.
Rather than feeling that she was missing out on a more glamorous holiday, Mardini said she genuinely enjoyed the trip and returned feeling that she had made the right choice.
“I like to just sit and relax,” she explained, adding that she does not feel a strong urge to constantly explore or move from one destination to another.
Her children, however, have started noticing what their peers are doing.
Mardini said her eldest son has begun asking about visiting destinations he has heard other children travelled to, but she does not see that as a reason to abandon the family's preferred style of holiday.
She said she would be happy to take him travelling as he grows older and develops those interests.
For her, visiting family and spending time with relatives provides a different kind of holiday experience.
Keeping the spending under control
Not every family struggles with the pressure to maximise a holiday.
Emirati father of two Ibrahim Al Katheeri travelled with his wife and children, aged five and three, to Turkey for a week earlier this summer.
He planned the entire trip, but said there was no conflict over the itinerary because his wife was happy to go along with his plans.
The family also kept their spending under control and maintained an emergency budget separately.
The result, he said, was a relaxed trip that felt worth the money without requiring them to overspend.
Photography was also a non-issue because neither he nor his wife particularly enjoys taking pictures.
Their experience highlights a point made by the experts — there is no single formula for a successful holiday.
What works for one family may be exhausting for another.
The holiday should have a purpose
Figueiredo said families can avoid some of the conflict by having conversations about expectations before they start planning. “What are we doing? What is the main intention of this holiday?” she said.
If the goal is rest, the itinerary should allow for rest. If it is reconnecting as a couple, the family needs to consider how they will actually create time together.
The same applies to work.
Figueiredo said couples should discuss in advance whether laptops will come on holiday, whether work messages will be checked and when.
“These things need probably to be negotiated,” she said.
Al Jaber similarly said families should redefine what counts as a successful holiday. Instead of measuring it by the number of destinations visited or photographs taken, families should ask how they felt together.
“How did we feel? How much did we laugh? How much did we enjoy being together?”
She also urged families not to treat every disappointing experience as someone's fault. If a restaurant turns out to be bad or an activity fails to live up to expectations, the person who booked it should not automatically be blamed.
“We are trying a new place. Neither of us knows," she said.
The holiday does not end when you arrive home
One of Figueiredo's strongest points was that families often spend weeks planning their departure but almost no time planning their return.
People may carefully organise flights, hotels, activities and restaurants, only to return immediately to work, school and household responsibilities.
“How do I plan my return?” she asked.
She recommends leaving some breathing room between arriving home and returning to work or school, where possible, rather than turning the final day of the holiday into another logistical rush.
“If my goal was to rest, how do I come back lingering that resting feeling?” she said.
Ultimately, Figueiredo said the best holiday may be the one that reflects who the family actually is, rather than what it believes a successful holiday is supposed to look like.
“Whatever I’m choosing needs to be aligned with myself: the person I am, the things I like to see, the things I like to do,” she said.
Al Jaber agreed, arguing that families should move away from measuring holidays by consumption and comparison and towards wellbeing.
The question, she said, should not simply be “How much did we do?” but “How did we feel while doing it?”
For families already feeling the pressure to make this summer count, that may be the simplest measure of all.
