traveling is meant to be one of the most exciting events in a person's life but more and more frustrated australians are ditching their travel plans and spending more time searching than they are on their actual holiday, a new study has found a survey of 1000 people across the country by travel search engine kayak found that one in four aussies spend the equivalent of more than half their annual leave researching and planning their trip travel agents' interests, the overload of information online, hidden costs and fluctuating prices were found to be making holiday bookers extra cautious with their plans about 38 per cent of people admitted they spend more time looking for flights and hotels then researching the activities they hope to do on the trip one in four aussies, like sydney marketing manager sam kelly (pictured on his last trip to bali), spend the equivalent of more than half their annual leave researching and planning their holidays  sydney marketing manager sam kelly, admitted that the number of hours it took him to plan his last trip to bali amounted to two weeks worth of working hours 'i spend a lot of time   hours and hours   it's a big process i don't go on budget holidays, but i've saved thousands of dollars by going through this process,' he told daily mail australia the 27 year old said that he spent the time researching potential hotels and destinations by looking at various booking sites and reviews, adding that despite enjoying the process, he found it took up a 'ridiculous amount of time' 'it's the amount of information out there one website that will do that legwork for you and get you the best hotel prices, show you reviews and airfares all in the one currency   one true source of truth   would be ideal,' he said mr kelly admitted that it was during office hours that most of his searching and booking occurred, and he's not alone according to kayak 26 per cent of those surveyed from canberra did the same thing   a figure which almost three times the national average it also found that 31 per cent of people have resorted to completely abandoning their travel plans and bookings due to their frustration investment banker todd fortescue came close to doing so himself when he and his girlfriend found themselves constantly bickering after becoming frustrated with travel agents helping them with their trip to canada earlier this year the 27 year old said there was an information overload online and admitted that he did a lot of research for his flights and hotels while at work  instead, the couple ditched their travel agent, choosing to find their own booking deals online 'we were getting frustrated that we weren't getting anywhere with booking and that it was costing more than we had anticipated and were thinking that maybe we should postpone it for a year when we had more time and knew exactly what we wanted,' mr fortescue told daily mail australia 'we went to a travel agent to get assistance and gave them an outline of what we wanted but some of them would give us all these different stories about why they didn't have accommodation in certain areas it seemed like they were working on commission with hotels because when we looked into the areas ourselves, we found plenty of options 'there was this constant back and forth of emails and some agents were in different time zones and the more time we wasted the more money we wasted as we got closer to the dates it was much cheaper when we did it ourselves' hidden costs were found to be one of the highest ranked frustrations for holiday bookers, worse than fluctuating prices and information overload overall, kayak found that 86 per cent of the people they surveyed 'spend the same amount of time or more planning and booking holidays than they did three years ago', but that more than half reported their holiday satisfaction had declined or stayed the same
two weeks 31 per cent aussies
a quarter of 1000 holiday bookers surveyed take two weeks to plan a trip  meanwhile 31 per cent admitted to ditching their bookings in frustration  travel agents' interests, the overload of information online, hidden costs and fluctuating prices were found to be making aussies extra cautious 