As someone who once took a work-related day trip to San Francisco it is a little hypocritical of me to criticise others for taking long-haul flights for vanishingly brief holidays. But for all sorts of reasons it really is a terrible idea.

The trend has been highlighted in Thomas Cook’s Holiday Report 2019, released this week, which notes “an increasing number of trips for less than seven days to long-haul destinations, with Mexico, San Francisco and other cities in the States rocketing in popularity.”

“We call them bite-size breaks,” says a Thomas Cook spokeswoman. “We’ve seen a big increase in people jetting off to long-haul destinations for a shorter amount of time. They’re trying to get their money’s worth out of their annual leave quota but also satisfy their desire for global travel.”

Flying has become cheaper; there are lots of good deals if you only carry hand baggage and check in online; the strength of the euro is encouraging us to look beyond the EU; and younger, unencumbered travellers think nothing of sitting in a plane for 10 hours and then embarking on a sleep-free 72 hours in Cancun or Cape Town. Farewell to the leisurely two-week package holiday – until you have children, at least.

US cities such as Las Vegas are popular destinations for people taking short breaks. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

Environmentally, the trend is a disaster, whatever the airlines say about greener aircraft and the rise of biofuels making flying less destructive. “That’s like saying we’ve thrown away plastic straws and now the world’s saved,” says Georgina Wilson-Powell, a travel specialist who edits the online sustainability magazine Pebble. “We need to encourage slow travel and local travel rather than jetting halfway across the world for three days. That’s just not eco-friendly.”

Wilson-Powell says flying is a touchstone in the war raging over climate change. “One of the most impactful things you can do if you want to live a more sustainable life is not fly,” she says. “Flying across the world for two or three days at a time doesn’t fit in to that.” She suggests that if you are flying long haul you should try to carbon offset – Emma Thompson’s get-out for her recent flight from Los Angeles was to join the Extinction Rebellion protest in London.

There is also the question of what weekend breakers get from taking a bite-sized chunk of a complex culture, and what they are putting in to the place they visit. “We encourage travellers to spend their money with people who really deserve it,” says Wilson-Powell. “Local tour groups, local accommodation, conservation projects, so your money is going back into the local economy. If you’re there for two or three days, that’s probably not happening. You’ll be spending most of your time on the plane.”

She says the rise in short breaks to long-haul destinations is driven by “a quest for the new”. “Social media fuels a lot of it. There are hotspots around the world that people want to get their photos taken in.” These are less bite-sized holidays than Instagram holidays. We came, we saw, we snapped. But what else is snapping?