baby boomer travel
Jeff Bezos of amazon.com has committed $250 million to buying The Washington Post
The recent news that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is buying The Washington Post left a lot of people scratching their heads.
Why would one of the most successful leaders of online commerce invest in a “dying” industry like newspapers?
There’s a short answer to this: to paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of newspapers has been greatly exaggerated.
I don’t say this just as someone who has written travel pieces for a good number of newspapers over the years — including The Washington Post — and to some extent still do. Or as someone who cut his journalistic teeth in newsrooms from Ann Arbor to Long Island to Miami. Or as someone who still reads newspapers myself.
I also acknowledge that much of my current work is done in the digital realm, including this blog.
But then, much… Continue reading
Will boomers stop traveling to courses like Turnberry in Scotland? Unlikely.
An old friend who I used to play golf with in school sent me a newsletter item from the National Golf Foundation (NGF) that questioned whether or not baby boomers would go bust in retirement — and, as one result, not be able to afford to play golf as much as retirees usually do.
According to the NGF, about 10 percent of boomers (aged 49 to 67) play golf, about one-third of all golfers in the U.S.
Typically, the NGF notes, retirees play more and more golf the older they get, until they’re too elderly to swing a club anymore. And the fact that boomer retirees 65+ will almost double the number of current retirees — there being 76 million of us, after all — means that golf should be looking at a, well, green future for the next… Continue reading
Marinas like this one in Mallorca, Spain, may provide baby boomer renters with chances to go for a spin. Photo by Clark Norton
For several years now we’ve been able to share cars and bicycles (especially in cities) — enabling people who don’t actually own a car or bike to rent or use one for part of a day — and now we’ve entered the era of boat sharing.
We’re talking everything from kayaks to catamarans to fully crewed yachts, in more than 60 countries around the world.
This is one of those great ideas I wonder why I didn’t think of it myself. The folks at GetMyBoat did — they launched their service in March — and more power to them.
Some 92 percent of boats are sitting idle in marinas around the world at any one time; why not create a system so others can rent them… Continue reading
Today I received a disheartening email from the director of the Cyprus Tourism Organization office in New York City.
The CTO is permanently closing the office as an apparent money-saving measure.
Cyprus, an island nation in the eastern Mediterranean, is closing its New York tourist office.
The Republic of Cyprus, like Greece and some other southern European countries, has been undergoing fiscal crisis of late, and I’m sure that keeping a New York office in operation has proved expensive.
Still, this action seems incredibly short-sighted to me.
Cyprus is one of the most alluring countries to visit in all of Europe, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s off the beaten track and overlooked by most Americans.
The island is a popular sun-and-sea escape for northern Europeans, but there’s much more to see and do there than beach life.
It has an amazing history, occupying a… Continue reading
Walking the World group — all aged 50-plus — hikes in Ireland. Photo from Walking the World
In a previous post I talked about Walking the World, an adventure tour company headed by veteran guide Ward Luthi, which caters just to travelers age 50 and up and specializes in walking and hiking trips in Europe, Asia, Latin America and beyond.
Luthi — who has met challenges as an Outward Bound instructor and successful tour company owner since 1987 — is now taking on new ones: giving back to local people around the world — particularly to those in Central America — who, as he puts it, “have given so much to me and my fellow travelers.”
Giving back is one of three pillars of Walking the World’s motto: “Get Up — Go Wild — Give Back.”
“Get Up” essentially means getting off the couch or up from… Continue reading
Back in the 1980s, Ward Luthi — an experienced Outward Bound instructor and adventure tour guide — served on the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors. The commission, he says, found that “active outdoor travel was rated one of the top three goals of older adults.”
Walking the World trips are limited to those aged 50-plus — who are mostly baby boomers. Photo from Walking the World.
Based on the commission’s findings, Luthi in 1987 founded Walking the World, which he says was the first company to offer active outdoor adventures just for those aged 50 and above in the U.S.
It was a prescient move, because with almost all the 76 million U.S. baby boomers — the most active generation of older travelers ever — now reaching 50-plus (the youngest boomers are 49), Luthi’s target market is growing exponentially.
I’ll be talking more about Walking the World tomorrow and… Continue reading
Woodstock Memorial at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Photo by Clark Norton
This weekend marks the 44th anniversary of 1969’s Woodstock Festival, one of the iconic events of the 1960s, when hundreds of thousands of mostly then-young baby boomers poured onto Max Yasgur’s Farm near the small town of Bethel in the Sullivan County Catskills, New York.
(As I’ve written about previously in this blog, the festival was moved from Woodstock, NY, to Bethel, some 60 miles west, due to various snafus.)
And as always happens on this anniversary weekend, thousands of folks high on music, nostalgia and perhaps a few other things descend on Bethel to honor the memory of the festival, which marked the height of the peace and love era. Many camp out around Hector’s Inn in Bethel, where volunteers are dishing out free meals to the tie-dyed visitors, or at what’s now called… Continue reading
Stan Bahnsen in his New York Yankee pitching heyday
Hey, baby boomer baseball fans: Anybody remember former stars like Frank Howard, Ferguson Jenkins, Tommy Davis and Ken Griffey, Sr.?
Of course you do. And MSC Cruises has figured out a way for you to meet them on their long-running series of Baseball Greats Cruises, now in their ninth year.
Organized and hosted by ex-Yankees pitcher Stan Bahnsen, the Baseball Greats Cruises run from November to April or May each year, forming a kind of high seas hot stove league.
Passengers get to mix and mingle with the greats, who mostly vary for each cruise — 17 different players, along with Bahnsen, will appear during five cruises between November 2013 and May 2014.
Highlights include autograph sessions, baseball trivia, pitching contests, baseball skills clinics, storytelling, question and answer sessions, and bonuses like blooper films and baseball movies. Passengers… Continue reading
What boomers want most when they travel?
I haven’t seen the full study, but the online market research firm Lab42 has released this tantalizing tidbit from a recent survey of 500 “social savvy” baby boomers — that is, who use social media — who plan to take a vacation in 2013:
Forty one percent of those surveyed said they were willing to spend more money to “stay more comfortably” in their lodgings at the expense of other aspects of the trip — presumably things like restaurants, transportation, sightseeing and other activities.
This compares to just one-quarter of those surveyed who said they would spend less on accommodations in order to spend more on other aspects of the trip, and a third who said they gave no consideration to the cost of overnight accommodations.
If I ran a luxury resort or hotel, this would have to be good news.
First, I… Continue reading
Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave
I hope that by now most travel agents realize the power of baby boomers in the travel market, but if not, I hope they’ll listen to these words from Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave (which has tracked boomer trends for decades), as he addressed a group of agents at a recent conference:
Baby boomers, Dychtwald told the agents, as reported in this piece from Travel Weekly, are the catalyst of “an entirely new era” for the travel industry.
Boomers have the money to travel, they want to travel, and they increasingly have the time to travel, as more and more reach retirement age, Dychtwald said. They bring their families along on their trips, too.
And boomers are looking for something different when they hit the road.
“There is an appetite for newness,” Dychtwald told the agents, “for different experiences that… Continue reading
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