How to craft the perfect OOO vacation email message

Nov 27 2018, 2:18 am

It’s coming: Your holiday break from work is almost here. But if you’re like us, you’re already thinking about crafting your Out Of Office (OOO) email message so you can be absolutely sure that your inbox is vacation-ready. Every second counts.

If you’re planning on celebrating the season in New York, ringing in the new year in Cancun or Vegas, or perhaps taking a trip to Europe in January, then you’ll want to be sure you’ve got your OOO message down. It needs to be professional, yet approachable. Informative, but not TMI. It’s possible, and we’ll show you how.

KAYAK wants you to spend more time planning your vacation, that’s why they’ve gone ahead and created an Out of Office generator using custom holiday filters to narrow down your options for the perfect OOO email response. Here’s how it works.

Choose the holiday you’ll be celebrating

Everyone is going to be doing something different this season, so no two email responses should really be the same. With KAYAK’s OOO generator, you can choose the holiday you’ll be celebrating: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, or “no holiday, just need a change of scenery.”

Next, choose the date you’ll be returning to work.

Select your favourite holiday cocktail

The holiday season involves boozy drinks — and a lot of them. So it makes sense to choose your holiday cocktail of choice before generating your OOO email response, right? Beer, wine, hot chocolate, hot toddies, tequila, and water, are your options on KAYAK’s OOO generator. No, eggnog is not an option, so you’ll have to choose your next favourite thing!

Choose your favourite holiday snack

There’s no doubt that you’ll be snacking this season — everyone will be. And that’s why you should really be selecting your go-to holiday snack before you create your OOO email response. Your options via KAYAK are turkey, chocolate, candy canes, vegan smoothies, latkes, or your “grandma’s famous casserole.”

Your availability while you’re away

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to totally check out for your vacation and remain blissfully unaware of everything happening at work, or if you’ll still check in every now and again. KAYAK gives you these three options:

  • “I’ll want to escape my family’s probing personal questions, so will check email frequently.”
  • “Is there such a thing as way-off grid? That’ll be me.”
  •  “Meh. I’ll check in on occasion if I feel like it.”

After making this executive decision, you can choose to add a coworker to contact in your absence, or leave this field blank if it’s unnecessary.

Decide upon your out-of-office vibe

Of course, you’re going to want to choose an out-of-office vibe before you set your OOO response in stone. KAYAK feels that there’s a scale you should use when you’re doing this. Here it is:

All you need to do is choose whether you’ll be keeping the bar where it is, or moving it up to the “shots” section. Be true to yourself.

Piece it all together and rejoice

Visit KAYAK to get your OOO vacation email template or to create your own. While you’re there, check out some of their best travel deals. According to data from 2017, KAYAK found that travellers who booked by December 8 found the best deal on airfare — a median of $244.

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