Would-be vacationers too often saddled with work to play

— -- It's not just higher airfares and escalating hotel fees that will cause some Americans to forgo a summer getaway. The nation's nose-to-the grindstone culture — which only intensified during the Great Recession— has resulted in many Americans leaving vacation days on the table.

"Americans are a hard-working lot, and they're ambitious and have a lot of priorities," says Carroll Rheem, senior director of research at PhoCusWright, a travel industry research firm. Its survey of more than 2,000 U.S. travelers found that nearly four in 10 didn't book a vacation within the past year. That number was much higher than in 2008, when just 28% didn't buy a vacation. "Sometimes they forget to take care of their work-life balance."

Not taking all the vacation time that's available to workers has become an American trait.

A poll conducted last September by Harris Interactive for JetBlue found that 57% of employed respondents said they would have unused vacation time at the end of the year. And a Radisson hotels study last year of more than 1,000 adults found that nearly two in three (65%) working Americans hadn't used all of their vacation time. Roughly a third said they stayed put because of their workload, and 19% noted that they didn't want to deal with a backlog of tasks upon their return.

A global survey taken of more than 12,500 workers by Ipsos Public Affairs and Reuters in 2010 found that only 57% of Americans used all their vacation time. That was in stark contrast to Europe, where 74% of workers on average took all their allotted days off. Europeans also tend to receive more vacation time than their American counterparts, management experts say.

Recognizing this opening, travel site Orbitz launched a "Take Vacation Back" ad campaign this month, complete with a tongue-in-cheek "vacation bill of rights" that has "no vacation day shall go un-traveled" listed at No. 1.

Chris Orton, president of Orbitz.com, says the company saw an opportunity to talk to travelers about how much fun a getaway can be and remind them that "they're not just entitled to them, but they actually need to take vacations. It's part of what makes them productive and happy."

Workplace fears

While the American inclination to bypass vacation predates the recent recession, experts say the economic downturn hasn't helped.

Some employees might think that "if you put in more time, you increase your chances for a promotion or reduce your chances for targeted layoffs," says Lonnie Golden, professor of economics and labor studies at Penn State University. "There's probably some signaling going on, for instance, that if you do take all your vacation time … you're less committed to your job, to your company."

Culturally, Golden says, Europeans have a greater commitment to leisure time that is supported by strong unions that give workers more bargaining power. And with American companies cutting staff and doubling the tasks given to those who remain, he says, working while on vacation — or not taking one at all — is "a way to minimize the avalanche that would occur if you go away for a week or even a few days."

Fear of a backlog is one reason Kevin McKeen says he's never taken all his four weeks of vacation time in any one year.

"I'm more stressed after a vacation than before, just because of the workload," says McKeen, 54, a business consultant for a computer software company in Austin.