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International Day Of Happiness: Travel Plays Vital Role In Joy, Says Global Survey (INFOGRAPHIC)

Is Travel More Important Than Marriage?
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The world's first International Happiness Day is set to take place on Wednesday, March 20 and while certain aspects of travel can be downright infuriating, a recent survey says travel is vital to a person's happiness.

In G Adventure's 2013 Happiness Survey, 83 per cent of respondents say that travel is considered very important to their happiness. Now, that's not saying much until you consider what they value travel over. Overall, 71 per cent of the 2,321 participants say that travel was more vital to their happiness than being promoted at work (3%), having a baby (6%) or even getting married (10%), among other lifetime milestones.

When it came to who values travel more, women outpace men. Though the genders differ when it came to whom they prefer to travel with. The majority of women list "friends" as their ideal travel buddy while men prefer to travel with their partner. For both genders, travelling with family comes in last place (sorry grandma).

While the survey shows the "new experiences" was the main drive behind what made travellers happy, a 2010 study from the Netherlands suggests that the rush of happiness comes before travellers even start packing their bags.

In the Applied Research in Quality of Life, researchers found that the mere idea of going on a trip was what brought happiness to someone's life and that unless a traveller was taking a "very relaxed holiday trip", there was no real difference in happiness between someone who'd returned from a trip and someone who never left at all.

The notion of wanting to travel as a source of happiness might also explain with another part of the Happiness Survey which suggests that half of those surveyed spent at least one hour day dreaming about travel while at work.

To see the rest of the survey's findings check out the infographic below.

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