The following was written by one of my VAs.
She wrote it in first person as if it were me. As if I had all this knowledge about why the Philippines has tons of holidays.
I don’t.
But there are 2 takeaways here:
1. they have a lot of holidays. Not all are required to have time off. You should be aware of of those dates when they won’t work. I explain it all (well…ok, one of my VAs explains it all) in this post about holidays in the Philippines and PTO
2. you can find really talented writers in the Philippines.
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No, you’re not imagining it. The Philippines has a LOT of holidays. In fact, they’re #4 in countries with most public holidays.
It’s intentional. Sometimes, the government even adjusts the holiday calendar to put the holidays closer to the weekends. Because of that, it feels like they have even more holidays than what’s listed on the calendar.
So why does the Philippine government allow this? Doesn’t it hurt their economy to have so many public holidays?
Surprisingly, it doesn’t. Mainly because when you have a long holiday, you’re more likely to travel. This benefits the tourism industry, one of the biggest contributors to their GDP and employs 13% of the population.
And if you look at the Philippines, who wouldn’t want to go on vacation as often as possible. I have VA who goes mountain biking on the weekends because he lives so close to the mountains. Some of my VAs have talked about bringing their laptops to the beach on weekdays so they can have a change of scenery while working.
Even during the pandemic, Filipinos continued to travel because it’s sometimes safer to stay in the rural and coastal areas where it’s less crowded.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they have a lot of holidays. As long as they have good internet connection, they can work. And as long as the work gets done, my business just keeps on growing.
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I told you she’s a talented writer!
We maintain a public calendar of holidays in the Philippines which you can access. I subscribe to it on my personal calendar so I have an idea of when nobody is going to work and I’m not expecting it.
John