Baby boomer travel
The Diamond Princess — ready for a meaningful cruise. Photo from Princess Cruises.
At the big annual New York Times Travel Show, held in frigid Manhattan over the weekend, it seemed a good time to think about cruising, preferably to tropical waters (though come the dog days of summer I’ll be pining for Arctic voyages, I’m sure).
So I crashed a seminar on what’s new in cruising aimed at travel agents, but open to the media. The panel had representatives from six of the largest mainstream and premium cruise lines that cater to the American market: Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Celebrity Cruise Line and MSC Cruises.
In my next post I’ll talk about some of the new cruise ships and features for 2014 that I heard about, but today I want to focus on the answers that the cruise line reps… Continue reading
Ryanair is not known for its comfort, but at these prices…photo from Alamy
British newspapers and travel trade publications are all abuzz with the news that the CEO of Ryanair, the cut-rate European airline, plans to offer flights to New York and Boston from a number of European cities for prices as low as 10 euros per seat.
That’s about U.S.$13.70 by today’s exchange rates. Flights back to Europe would cost even less, about U.S.$10.
Not bad. Of course, there are some caveats.
First, Ryanair will have to buy up to 50 long-haul aircraft to make the flights worthwhile, and that could take several years.
Second, not all the seats on the plane would be that cheap. “There will also need to be a very high number of business or premium seats,” the CEO, Michael O’Leary, told the Irish Hotels Federation in Meath, Ireland, where he made the announcement.… Continue reading
Boomers are willing to spend to take experiential trips such as walking tours in Ireland. Photo from Walking the World
While travel industry advertisers continue to pursue the Millennial market — perfectly reasonable, considering that the Millennial generation is the future — it makes no sense to overlook the currently booming baby boomer travel market.
Here are some statistics — gathered from both government and private research surveys — to ponder if you think boomers (now aged 50-68) are over the hill, travel-wise, and are largely staying at home, maybe watching TV or tending their flower gardens:
* Adults over age 50 account for four out of every five dollars spent on luxury travel in America
* Adults 55 and older spend half of all vacation dollars in the U.S.
* Baby boomers make most of their major purchases, including big-ticket travel items, over the Internet, and spend two hours… Continue reading
Spurred by saturation TV coverage of poker tournaments that rival more physical sports for high-stakes drama, poker’s popularity has exploded throughout the U.S. in recent years.
And baby boomers are in the thick of the action. But what are the top spots to play in the country? Here are America’s top three poker-playing locations for traveling boomers:
Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, Mississippi.
Tunica, Mississippi
The once impoverished town of Tunica, Mississippi, suddenly turned its fortunes around a few years ago and emerged as America’s third largest casino region (after Las Vegas and Atlantic City).
Located just 30 minutes from Memphis, Tunica offers avant-garde poker rooms, no-limit gaming, and warm Southern hospitality. Harrah’s Hotel and Casino, Hollywood Casino, and Bally’s are among the most popular places to play poker here. The Senior Poker Tour (SPT) at the Horseshoe Casino Tunica has made the town even more appealing. Launched in January… Continue reading
Ellen Perlman of BoldlyGoSolo (top) on Maui. (She did ride the bike down Haleakala volcano solo.) Photo courtesy of boldlygosolo.com
Last week I was interviewed about baby boomer travel for a recorded series called the Age Busters Power Summit, which will air sometime on or after March 13 (I’ll have more specifics in a later post).
The target audience is baby boomer women, and — never having traveled as a baby boomer woman myself — I asked my good friend and fellow travel writer Ellen Perlman, who writes a blog called BoldlyGoSolo.com, to give me a few pointers about what to suggest to women traveling alone.
Her tips were so valuable that I want to pass them along on my own blog.
While they pertain to just about any woman traveling solo, a baby boomer woman who is trying solo travel for the first time might find these especially… Continue reading
Vilnius, Lithuania — if you leave tomorrow, you can get a great deal on a flight there via Kayak.com.
Whenever I book a plane flight, I always turn first to the website Kayak.com, which displays an array of choices from a wide variety of airlines, and allows you to sort by price, airline, preferred takeoff or landing times, and flight duration.
You can also compare Kayak’s findings against different sites like Priceline, Hotwire and Expedia, so you get a pretty complete picture of what’s out there before you book. And Kayak lets you compare hotel and rental car offerings as well.
But when I went to the site yesterday, I noticed something new — at least new to me.
It’s a feature called “Explore,” which shows you “where you can go for how much.” That is, you can see the lowest fares for round-trip economy-class flights to destinations around the… Continue reading
A boat sails through Qutang Gorge, one of the fabled Three Gorges, along China’s Yangtze River. Photo by Liu Liqun/ChinaStock.
River cruising has been one of our big topics recently, and for good reason: it’s the hottest segment of the cruising market, and it’s become a global craze, especially popular among baby boomers.
Asia is one of river cruising’s new hotspots, and while China’s Yangtze River cruises have been around for a while, it’s hard to think of a better way to experience the country than cruising through China’s heartland, with visits to Shanghai and Beijing on either end of a nine-day river voyage.
Pacific Delight Tours, one of America’s leading tour operators to China, has just announced a two-week all-inclusive package that includes those three highlights — as well as transpacific airfare from Los Angeles or San Francisco to boot (airfare from JFK in New York will… Continue reading
Hiking along Virginia’s Appalachian Trail is a favorite activity of international visitors. Photo by Clark Norton
In yesterday’s post, we asked the rhetorical question “Can A Rebranding Campaign Boost Tourism to the U.S.?”
According to new research that’s just out, apparently so.
Brand USA, a public-private partnership that aims to improve the image of the U.S. around the world for the purpose of increasing international visitation to the States, is now citing a study by Oxford Economics that shows the new advertising campaign — called “Discover America, Land of Dreams” — resulted in 1.1 million new visitors to the U.S. in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013. That’s a 2.3 percent increase over the number that would have visited without the campaign.
Those 1.1 million visitors, according to the study, spent $3.4 billion in the U.S. and had a total impact on the economy of $7.4 billion, supporting… Continue reading
Uniworld’s River Victoria sails Russian waterways. Photo from Uniworld Boutique River Cruises.
River cruising has gone global, in a big way.
In yesterday’s post, we had a look at the phenomenal rise of European river cruising over the past few years, to the degree that many 2014 cruises are already sold out or nearly sold out.
Baby boomer travelers are the primary driving force behind the river cruise phenomenon, which has averaged a 14 percent annual growth over the past decade. (Just 20 years ago, most European river cruises were day cruises only.)
One line alone, Viking River Cruises — which caters mainly to baby boomers — will soon have 48 river cruise ships operating on European waterways, with 30 of them launched in the past three years.
In Russia, a series of waterways links Moscow and St. Petersburg. Viking, Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, Imperial River… Continue reading
The Viking Europe river boat, part of Viking’s rapidly expanding fleet. Photo from Viking River Cruises.
If you haven’t booked your planned 2014 European river cruise by now, you may be out of luck — at least for your preferred cruise line, cabin or destination.
European river cruising is the hottest trend in the cruise world right now, with many 2014 cruises already selling out or almost sold out. And its popularity is being driven largely by baby boomer travelers, who can afford to pay more per day than on a typical ocean cruise.
Several river cruise lines and travel agents who book cruises say they’re now more focused on 2015 than on 2014. This despite a rash of new ships being introduced into the market:
* Viking River Cruises, the giant of the industry, is launching 14 new European river ships in March, bringing its total there to… Continue reading
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