Finance

SINGAPORE — Customers in Asia-Pacific have picked their favorite banks as lenders scramble to meet consumer expectations in a fast-changing environment.
After a prolonged period of high inflation — and interest rates — banks in the region are starting to navigate the global trend of lower rates. They’re also facing technological innovation that has the potential to transform the sector, as generative AI gains traction around the world.

Against this backdrop, CNBC and market research firm Statista surveyed 22,000 individuals with a checking or savings account in 14 major economies. The report below — the first of its kind — is designed to highlight the banks that best meet consumer needs in their respective markets.
For the survey, participants evaluated their overall satisfaction with a bank, and whether they would recommend it to others. They also rated each based on five criteria: trust, terms and conditions (such as fees and rates), customer service, digital services and quality of financial advice. Read the full methodology here. The ranking only included banks that qualified according to the criteria described in the report.
See below to see which banks made the list in your location.

Australia

1
ING Group

2
Bank Australia

3
Westpac

4
Ubank

5
NAB

6
Alex Bank

7
Newcastle Permanent Building Society

8
People’s Choice Credit Union

9
Beyond Bank

10
ME

11
Suncorp

12
MyState Bank

13
Australian Military Bank

14
Community First bank

15
Heritage Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Dutch bank ING came out top in Australia, against a sea of local competition. Like most economies, Australians valued trust the most and were less concerned on the financial advice they were given.

China

1
China Merchants Bank

2
Bank of China

3
ICBC

4
HSBC

5
China Construction Bank

6
Postal Savings Bank of China

7
China Minsheng Bank

8
Standard Chartered

9
SPD Bank

10
Bank of Communications

11
Agricultural Bank of China

12
UBS (China) Limited

13
JPMorgan Chase Bank (China)

14
China Everbright Bank

15
Ping An Bank

16
DBS Bank (China)

17
Bank of Suzhou

18
Bank of Jiangsu

19
Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank

20
Hang Seng Bank

21
Hubei Rural Credit Union Association

22
Huishang Bank

23
East West Bank

24
WeBank

25
Hankou Bank (HKB)

Source: CNBC & Statista

China Merchants Bank, listed in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, earned the top spot in mainland China beating both domestic and foreign players.

Hong Kong

1
China Construction Bank

2
China Minsheng Bank

3
ICBC

4
SPD Bank

5
China Everbright Bank

6
Bank of Communication

7
HSBC

8
CGB

9
Livi Bank

10
China Merchants Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

China Construction Bank, one of China’s four major state-owned banking institutions, was ranked the top lender over foreign players like HSBC.

India

1
ICICI Bank

2
HDFC Bank

3
Axis Bank

4
Kotak Mahindra Bank

5
State Bank of India

6
HSBC

7
Paytm Payments Bank

8
Standard Chartered

9
Federal Bank

10
IndusInd Bank

11
Union Bank of India

12
Karnataka Bank

13
Punjab National Bank

14
Bank of Baroda

15
Bandhan Bank

16
Fincare

17
DSCB

18
Kerala Gramin Bank

19
Fino Payments Bank

20
APCOB

21
Punjab Gramin Bank

22
IDFC First Bank

23
UCO Bank

24
RBLBank

25
New India Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

ICICI bank, a leading private sector bank in India, was the top pick in the country despite strong competition from mostly local lenders.

Indonesia

1
Bank Central Asia

2
Bank Mandiri

3
Sea Bank

4
Jago

5
Raya Bank

6
Bank Negara Indonesia

7
United Overseas Bank

8
PermataBank

9
Cimb Niaga

10
DBS

11
Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI)

12
BNC

13
Bank Muamalat

14
Jenius

15
BCA Syariah

16
HSBC

17
BDP DIY

18
Bank Aceh

19
Standard Chartered

20
Bank Sumsel Babel

Source: CNBC & Statista

Bank Central Asia, Indonesia’s largest private commercial bank, beat the competition to clinch the top spot. Customers valued both trust as well as digital services in their ranking.  

Japan

1
SBI Sumishin Net Bank

2
Rakuten Bank

3
Sony Bank

4
Aeon Bank

5
au Jibun Bank

6
PayPay Bank

7
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

8
Senshu Ikeda Bank

9
The Juhachi-Shinwa Bank

10
Iyo Bank

11
Ehime Bank

12
Japan Post Bank

13
Ja Bank

14
Kyushu Labor Bank

15
Hamamatsu Iwata Shinkin Bank

16
Keiyo Bank

17
Bank of Fukuoka

18
Shinsei Bank

19
The Nishi-Nippon City Bank

20
Aozora Bank

21
Saitama Resona Bank

22
MUFG Bank

23
Lawson Bank

24
Gunma Bank

25
Hachijuni Bank

26
Rokin Bank

27
Kiyo Bank

28
Tokyo Star Bank

29
The Bank of Okinawa

30
Kyoto Chuo Shinkin Bank

31
Abukuma Shinkin Bank

32
North Pacific Bank

33
Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank

34
Tottori Bank

35
Bank of Kyoto

Source: CNBC & Statista

SBI Sumishin Net Bank, a Japan-based company, managed to beat other domestic lenders to come out top. Japanese citizens valued trust as their most important criteria.

Malaysia

1
Maybank

2
Standard Chartered

3
Maybank Islamic

4
HSBC

5
RHB Islamic Bank

6
Bank Islam

7
AmBank Group Islamic

8
OCBC Bank

9
United Overseas Bank

10
Hong Leong Islamic Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Maybank, which is the largest bank by market value in Malaysia, was the customers top pick against competition from domestic and foreign lenders.

New Zealand

1
Bank of New Zealand

2
ASB Bank

3
The Co-operative Bank

4
SBS Bank

5
Kiwibank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Bank of New Zealand, one of New Zealand’s big four banks, earned the top spot among consumers who also valued trust as the most important criteria. In some economies, like New Zealand, there are fewer competitors in the market and the size of the banking market differs, thus only five banks made the list.

Philippines

1
Philippine National Bank

2
Union Bank (Philippines)

3
Maya Bank

4
OFBank

5
UnionDigital Bank

6
UNO Digital Bank

7
GoTyme Bank

8
LANDBANK

9
Metrobank

10
BPI

Source: CNBC & Statista

Philippine National Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, earned the top rank against competition from largely local lenders.

Singapore

1
DBS

2
HSBC

3
Citibank

4
Bank of Singapore

5
United Overseas Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Singapore’s biggest bank DBS beat its domestic peers to clinch the top spot in the city-state. Given the small market size, there are fewer banking competitors as a result only five made the list.

South Korea

1
TossBank

2
KakaoBank

3
Kwangju Bank

4
K bank

5
Jeonbuk Bank

6
KB Kookmin Bank

7
Industrial Bank of Korea

8
DGB Daegu Bank

9
BNK Busan Bank

10
KEB Hana Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Toss Bank, an internet-only bank based in South Korea, managed to fend off domestic competition to emerge as top lender in the country.

Taiwan

1
E.Sun Financial

2
Bank SinoPac

3
Standard Chartered

4
CTBC Bank

5
Taipei Fubon Bank

6
Taishin International Bank

7
HSBC

8
Rakuten International Commercial Bank

9
Cathay Financial

10
Mega International Commercial Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Taiwan’s E.Sun Financial, headquartered in Taipei, earned the top ranking with customers focused on trust and less concerned about financial advice.

Thailand

1
Kasikornbank

2
Siam Commercial Bank

3
Bank of Ayudhya

4
United Overseas Bank

5
Krung Thai Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Kasikornbank bank, Thailand’s second-largest lender, came out top in the country. Only five banks made the list as there are fewer competitors and the size of banking market varies.

Vietnam

1
Techcombank

2
Vietcombank

3
BIDV

4
Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank

5
ACB

6
Vietinbank

7
VIB

8
TPBank

9
Sacombank

10
VP Bank

11
BVBank

12
Shinhan Bank

13
SeA Bank

14
HDBank

15
Ocean Bank

Source: CNBC & Statista

Vietnamese private lender Techcombank is the customers’ top pick in the country, where trust again was the key factor for survey respondents. More

Keith Gill, known on Reddit under the pseudonym DeepF——-Value and as Roaring Kitty, is seen on a fragment of a youtube video displayed on a smartphone screen in front of GameStop logo.
Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Almost five years ago, GameStop champion Keith Gill revealed a $53,000 bet in his favorite video game retailer. This week, Gill’s net worth is over $289 million.
The meme stock leader, who can move the stock by simply posting cryptic messages online, shared a screenshot of his portfolio Monday night, showing he held onto his 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options even after a 21% rally. He made a whopping $79 million on paper on Monday — a single trading day.

Gill, whose handle is “DeepF——Value” on Reddit and “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and X, started sharing his GameStop position in September 2019 with a $53,000 stake, encouraging a band of retail traders to squeeze out short-selling hedge funds. By the end of the jaw-dropping episode in April 2021, Gill exercised his call options position to have 200,000 common shares.
The size of his positions dramatically increased when he resurfaced online three years later. Meanwhile, GameStop, a stock he originally bought because he thought it was a deep-value bet, is still struggling with shifting away from brick-and-mortar video game purchases to e-commerce.

Arrows pointing outwards

“The most successful players are those that are just out of their minds. You have to be made of something different to trade like that,” said Michael Khouw, co-founder and chief strategist of OpenInterest.PRO.
“You would never see a professional trader make those kinds of numbers,” Khouw added. “Most of our risk managers would have come down on this way before you ever got to something swinging around like this. It’s just unimaginable.”
Gill could run into some trouble, though. The Wall Street Journal reported that Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade broker was considering booting him because of the worry that what he was doing could amount to market manipulation. 

CNBC was unable to verify what Gill has shared about his GameStop stake and portfolio.
Next steps?
The last screenshot of Gill’s portfolio showed 120,000 call options against GameStop with a strike price of $20 that expires June 21.
Put another way: If the stock closes above $20 that day, Gill could exercise the options at $20 apiece, leaving him owning an additional 12 million shares. A total of 17 million shares would make him the fourth-biggest shareholder in GameStop, coming in behind Vanguard, BlackRock and Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures, according to FactSet.

Arrows pointing outwards

The notional value, if exercised, would be $240 million worth of stock bought at $20.
“Unless you have the money to take custody of the stock after exercising the calls, you’re just renting them with the assumption of selling them, or selling stock against them before they expire,” said CC Lagator, co-founder of brokerage Options AI. “The issue on a position of that size is, it would be very apparent to other market participants that those calls or stock versus those calls was being sold, putting a lot of pressure on the stock.”

$1 billion?

If Gill exercises the calls, that would leave him with 17 million shares. At Monday’s close of $28, the stake would be worth $476 million.
At GameStop’s recent peak of $64.83 on May 14, it would be worth $1.1 billion. (His cost to acquire such a stake this way would be $421.4 million.)
Gill could also roll those call options to a further expiration date to buy some time, which means exiting the current position and immediately entering a similar position. However, that could be a costly option.”The problem with that is he’s going to be wasting money on new option premium each time he does that,” Lagator said.
Shares of GameStop fell 5.4% on Tuesday. More

Nothing has been able to stop American consumers. At first they splashed covid-19 savings on home-exercise bicycles; now they are more likely to plump for beachside holidays. Predictions, made by bank bosses last summer, that households would be squeezed by inflation have been confounded. Instead, their outlays have powered American GDP ever higher, at a pace beyond the country’s G7 peers.But are the predictions at last coming true? Monthly consumer-spending growth fell from 0.7% in March to just 0.2% in April. Overall spending shrank in real terms. Retail sales have weakened, with brands from McDonald’s, a burger purveyor, to 3M, a maker of sticky tape, warning that customers are closing their wallets. The recent spending data, released on May 31st, helped wipe almost a percentage point off the prediction of annual gdp growth from the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve, cutting its “nowcast” for the second quarter of the year to 1.8%. More

London-based Standard Chartered, which primarily serves clients in emerging markets, was previously punished with more than $1.7 billion in fines after admitting in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions on Iran and other blacklisted countries.
The bank denies that it ran transactions for any organizations designated as terrorists.
Court filings provided by former Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) employee turned whistleblower Julian Knight claim that U.S. officials lied by denying that Knight provided them with evidence of far greater wrongdoing by the bank.

Standard Chartered Plc bank branch in Hong Kong
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Recent documents submitted to a U.S. federal court allege that major British bank Standard Chartered helped finance sanctioned Iranian entities and terrorist groups, and that relevant evidence was ignored by American authorities.
London-based Standard Chartered, which primarily serves clients in emerging markets, was previously punished with more than a combined $1.7 billion in fines after admitting in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions on Iran and other blacklisted countries.

The bank denies that it ran transactions for any organizations designated as terrorists.
The latest court filings, provided by former Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) employee turned whistleblower Julian Knight, claim that U.S. officials lied by denying that he provided them with evidence of far greater wrongdoing by the bank. The officials then applied to dismiss his whistleblower case against the bank as “meritless” in 2019 in order to shield it, Knight alleged. He has now asked a U.S. federal court in New York to reinstate the case.
Knight, who led a Standard Chartered transaction services unit between 2009 and 2011, was one of two whistleblowers who gave U.S. investigators confidential bank statements in 2012 and 2013. The statements documenting transactions that he says contained proof of further sanctions breaches, including violations beyond 2007, when the bank said it had stopped any dealings with Iran.
Knight’s court filing alleges that the U.S. government committed a “colossal fraud” against the legal system by denying he had presented “damning evidence” that Standard Chartered “facilitated many billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terror groups, and the front companies for those groups,” according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Some of that evidence, the court filing says, showed that the bank’s clients included front companies for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Palestinian militant group Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Iran-linked entities in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Germany and other countries. 

The two whistleblowers alleged that U.S. authorities who investigated Standard Chartered “made false statements to a court in order to have their [Knight’s and his colleague’s] claim for a whistleblower’s reward dismissed” in 2019, the BBC reported.
The authorities in question, including an FBI agent, said that the whistleblowers’ claims “did not lead to the discovery of any new … violations.” The court then dismissed the case as “meritless.” CNBC has contacted the U.S. Department of Justice for comment.
The ICIJ report says Knight’s latest claim alleges that the U.S. government “lied that it had conducted ‘a lengthy, costly, and substantial investigation’ into his claims or it was “fully aware” of the transactions he had provided “and simply lied to conceal them,” adding: “The Government’s own statements support the latter scenario.”
In response to a CNBC request for comment, a Standard Chartered spokesperson described Knight’s court filing as “another attempt to use fabricated claims against the bank, following previous unsuccessful attempts” and said that the “false allegations underpinning it have been thoroughly discredited by the U.S. authorities who undertook a comprehensive investigation into the claims and said they were ‘meritless’ and did not show any violations of U.S. sanctions.” More

The U.S. Small Business Administration plans to unveil new government-backed credit lines of up to $5 million for small businesses, SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman told CNBC.
The SBA is launching a working capital pilot program in the coming months that is designed to be more attractive to both lenders and borrowers than the agency’s existing products, Guzman said in a phone interview.
The SBA’s new working capital lines will have an annual fee and interest rates based on the prime rate plus 3% to 6.5%, which would be roughly 12% to 15% today, according to the agency.

Ira L. Black – Corbis | Corbis News | Getty Images

The U.S. Small Business Administration plans to unveil new government-backed credit lines of up to $5 million for small businesses, SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman told CNBC.
The SBA is launching a working capital pilot program in the coming months that is designed to be more attractive to both lenders and borrowers than the agency’s existing products, Guzman said in a phone interview.

“An ongoing challenge for small businesses who are trying to go after that contract, perhaps to help us rebuild infrastructure … or a manufacturing facility that’s trying to expand its orders, is being able to have working capital to deliver against that,” Guzman said.
The project is part of the SBA’s efforts to broaden its flagship lending program for American small businesses. Through its 7(a) loan program, the SBA provides guaranties to lenders to encourage them to extend loans to small business owners.
The program backed more than 57,000 loans worth $27.5 billion last year, a 7% increase from 2022; most of those loans were for less than $350,000.

Isabel Guzman, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) nominee for U.S. President Joe Biden, is sworn in during a Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021.
Bill Leary | Bloomberg | Getty Images

But the SBA’s efforts to provide revolving lines of credit have had “less uptake” from lenders and business owners than the agency had hoped, Guzman said.
The agency’s SBA Express loan, for instance, offers credit lines of up to $500,000, but with a 50% guaranty, which made it less appealing to lenders, she said. Another SBA product called CapLines had a complicated fee structure that wasn’t as affordable, Guzman said.

“This product is our aim to increase access to a simpler working capital line,” Guzman said. “It basically takes the best of our various options to create a pilot program to see if we can get more borrowers an affordable working capital line, versus just a pure reliance on credit cards” or other capital sources,  she said.
The SBA’s new working capital lines will have an annual fee and interest rates based on the prime rate plus 3% to 6.5%, which would be roughly 12% to 15% today, according to the agency. They will allow small business owners to either fund specific projects or borrow against their assets.
Loans larger than $150,000 will have a 75% guaranty by the SBA, limiting the losses that lenders face if customers can’t repay their debts. Loans smaller than $150,000 have an 85% guaranty, the agency said.
“In an environment of higher interest rates, we want to make sure that the SBA is an option for more businesses,” Guzman said.
Business owners interested in applying when the program goes live should head to the SBA’s website or its pre-screening lender platform, she said.

Don’t miss these exclusives from CNBC PRO More

Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

E-Trade is having internal discussions about whether to ban Keith Gill — the meme stock trader who just disclosed a big position in GameStop — from the trading platform over concerns regarding potential market manipulation, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The brokerage, owned by Morgan Stanley, hasn’t reached a decision yet, the Journal said, citing people familiar with deliberations inside the firm.

GameStop shares shot up early Monday after Gill, who goes by “DeepF——Value” on Reddit, posted a screenshot of what could be his portfolio holding a significant amount of GameStop common shares and call options. The meme stock leader holds 5 million shares of GameStop and a position of 120,000 call options with a strike price of $20 that expire on June 21, purchased for about $5.68 each, the screenshot showed.
E-Trade declined comment to CNBC, noting “we don’t publicly discuss the individual activity of our clients.”
Morgan Stanley’s global financial-crimes unit and external counsel began debating if it should cancel Gill’s account as the firm monitored his account activity, the Journal said.
The brokerage found that in May Gill had bought call options before he posted on social media platform X, the Journal said, adding that some of those contracts expired that week, meaning he likely made a profit.
The meme stock mania in 2021 led to a series of congressional hearings, including testimony by Gill, around brokers’ practices and gamifying retail stock trading. Gill also faced several class action lawsuits, including one alleging that he pretended to be a novice trader despite being a licensed professional.

Gill worked as a marketing and financial education employee at MassMutual in 2019 and 2020.
— Click here to read the WSJ story. More

Keith Gill still owned 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options with a strike price of $20 that expire on June 21, according to a screenshot he showed.
The meme stock leader known as ‘Roaring Kitty’ is behind GameStop’s recent roller-coaster ride.
E-Trade, the Morgan Stanley-owned brokerage Gill uses, is holding internal talks about whether to ban him from the platform, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Keith Gill, known on Reddit under the pseudonym DeepF——-Value and as Roaring Kitty, is seen on a fragment of a youtube video displayed on a smartphone screen in front of GameStop logo.
Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Meme stock leader Keith Gill, who’s behind GameStop’s recent roller-coaster ride, appeared to hold onto his big position in the video game retailer even after Monday’s big rally.
Gill, whose handle is “DeepF——Value” on Reddit and “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and X, posted another screenshot of his portfolio showing the same common stock and call option holdings Monday after the stock market closed as those he shared Sunday evening. He still owned 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options with a strike price of $20 that expire on June 21, the screenshot showed.

The post on Reddit’s r/SuperStonk forum could not be independently verified by CNBC. 
Shares of GameStop climbed about 4% in extended trading following his latest Reddit post.

Arrows pointing outwards

GameStop closed Monday’s volatile session up 21%, after soaring as much as 70% at one point intraday. The stock was hit by a Wall Street Journal report in afternoon trading saying E-Trade, the Morgan Stanley-owned brokerage Gill uses, is holding internal talks about whether to ban him from the platform over concerns regarding potential market manipulation.
Gill’s latest post came shortly after the WSJ report. It appeared to show the trader did not sell even as the value of his common stock stake alone jumped to $140 million from $115.7 million in a single day. More

Workers tend to leave paid time off, like vacation days, on the table each year.
Those unused days may not roll over to next year; you may also not get a financial benefit by forgoing them.
There are ways to take vacation time more efficiently and maximize the quality of the days off, experts said.

D3sign | Moment | Getty Images

Americans aren’t good at taking vacation.
About 62% of workers say having a job with paid time off — for vacations or illness — is “extremely important” to them, more so than benefits like health insurance, a 401(k) plan or paid parental leave, according to a Pew Research Center report from 2023. However, 46% don’t use all the time off made available to them, Pew found.

“If you never take vacation or have time off, you’re not honoring how humans were created and what we need to stay refreshed,” said Elizabeth Grace Saunders, a time management coach. “We’re biological human beings. We’re not machines.”
The number of vacation days workers typically get depends on a variety of factors, like company tenure, income and industry.
More from Personal Finance:Flying is cheaper in 2024. But not for some destinationsWhy skiplagging carries a ‘super big risk’Some vacationers expect to carry summer travel debt
For example, on average, private sector employers offer 11 vacation days after one year of service; 15 days after five years; 18 days after 10 years; and 20 days after 20 years, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, 32% of employees say their unused vacation days don’t roll over to the next year, while 28% don’t get paid for unused days, according to a 2022 poll by Qualtrics.

What’s more, the U.S. is the only developed nation that doesn’t require that workers get paid vacation, according to a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

About 21% of Americans who work in the private sector don’t get paid vacation, and 20% do not get paid holidays, according to the BLS.
Those who work in service jobs, earn lower wages, have part-time or non-union roles or work at smaller companies are much less likely to get them, agency data shows.
Here’s how you can maximize your vacation time, whether paid or unpaid — both for efficiency and overall quality, according to experts.

‘Play a little Tetris’

Grouping vacation days with other guaranteed time off helps extend your time away without sacrificing additional paid time off, experts said.
In other words: Take advantage of weekends and paid holidays.
For example, July 4 this year falls on a Thursday. Taking off just one day (Friday, July 5) would give you a four-day weekend.
“Play a little Tetris” with your calendar, Saunders said.
There’s often a trade-off with this approach, however.
For example, traveling around holidays or flying on weekend days like Friday and Sunday are generally busier and more expensive, said Sally French, a travel expert at NerdWallet.

Leverage business travel, remote work

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

Workers may be able to bookend business trips with vacation time, French said.
If your company sends you to a conference in another state for part of the workweek, you might take a vacation day to spend an extra day in your destination city, French explained.
If coupled with a weekend, workers may not even need to use any paid time off, she said. The company may also cover a portion of the costs like airfare, she added.
Additionally, those who work remotely or only part time in the office may be able to leverage those arrangements to get away without taking time off, French said. (There’s even a practice especially among younger workers known as “quiet vacationing,” whereby workers work around a dearth of PTO by secretly taking time off.)
Hotels leaned into this trend during the Covid-19 pandemic, offering amenities like rooms for video calls and co-working spaces free for guests, she said.
“That trend really has not died off even in 2024,” she said.
Workers with this flexibility can also more easily take advantage of traveling on cheaper days, like midweek for flights, she added.

Pace PTO in a ‘measured’ way

Pacing vacation days throughout the year in a “measured” way helps prevent burnout, Saunders said.
She recommends taking at least one day off every month — or at least every couple months — even if it’s just a staycation.

People who don’t take a vacation until “feeling really burnt out” get to a point where they don’t enjoy work and need two or three days of vacation just to feel “normal” again, she said.
Workers who don’t get many days off (perhaps 10 total, for example) may want to consider taking one longer trip that requires four or five PTO days and bundling their remaining days with paid holidays, Saunders said.

Boost that ‘refreshed’ feeling

People may feel more “refreshed” by PTO if they take days off strategically during different periods of busy-ness at work, Saunders said.  
Taking time off during busy periods feels more “refreshing” than doing so when things are more chill, for example, she said.
Of course, people may not be able to get away during crunch time or may not have people to whom they can delegate work while they’re away; for such people, taking time off during chiller periods may be more beneficial to avoid work stress while on vacation.
Likewise, it may help to give yourself an extra day before returning to work — by returning Saturday instead of Sunday, let’s say — to take care of errands like laundry, French said.
That buffer may give some additional peace of mind, she said.

Give yourself an ‘acceptable minimum’

Many people may avoid taking time off due to feelings of guilt.
For example, 43% of Americans don’t use all their PTO because they feel badly about co-workers taking on extra work, according to Pew Research Center.  
Additionally, some studies have shown that workers who get “unlimited” PTO tend to take off less time relative to those with a set limit.
Workers who struggle to take time off should set a personal “acceptable minimum” — for example, ensuring you take off at least 15 days in any given year, Saunders said.  
And try to fully unplug while on vacation, experts advise.
Put up your “out of office” message, turn off e-mail notifications and don’t take work calls; if you absolutely must, try to limit work to just one hour a day, Saunders said.

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