baby boomers and tourism
Captain Cook Cruises’ 130-passenger vessel sails through Fiji. Photo by Clark Norton
Possibly due in part to recent bad publicity about large ocean cruising vessels gone wrong, travel agents are seeing an upsurge in interest in small ship and river cruising, according to an internal American Express Travel survey released during a recent cruise industry conference in Vancouver.
The survey of 250 Amex agents showed that 38 percent of them ranked small ship cruises as their highest-demand voyages, followed by megaships at 31 percent and river cruises at 27 percent.
This dovetails with my own surveys of baby boomer travelers, who have often told me they would never consider taking a cruise — until I ask about small ship and river cruises. Then I often get this kind of reply: “Oh, those are different — I’d try them.”
Megaships carrying thousands of passengers — with their myriad on-board activities, entertainments,… Continue reading
Boomers on a ROW Adventures river trip. Photo from ROW Adventures
If you want to know how important boomers are to adventure travel tour operators, ask Peter Grubb of Idaho-based ROW Adventures, which was named Travel and Leisure’s top tour operator for 2012.
“VERY important,” Grubb told me, especially since most of ROW’s international trips are comprised primarily of members of the baby boomer generation, now aged 49-67. International trips may range from sea kayaking in Baja and whale watching in British Columbia to snorkeling in the Galapagos and venturing to Machu Picchu. Boomers, he notes, often have more time and money to spend on such trips than other groups.
Boomers also join many of ROW’s domestic adventure trips, which include rafting, hiking, kayaking and canoeing in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. (ROW began as a small Idaho river-rafting operation 34 years ago and has expanded rapidly over the past… Continue reading
Sailaway to Alaska aboard the Disney Wonder. Photo from Disney Cruise Lines
When my wife and I took a Disney cruise to Alaska last summer — sans kids, who are now grown — we weren’t sure if we would feel out of place on a Disney vessel. We had enjoyed all the usual Disney entertainments when our kids were young, but how would we fare as a couple on the Disney Wonder, sailing through Alaska’s Inside Passage?
Would we be overwhelmed with small children in the swimming pool and dining rooms, and besieged by roaming Mickeys and Minnies?
We needn’t have worried. While Disney cruises are certainly as family-friendly as you would expect, with far more kids sailing with Disney than on the average Alaska cruise, Disney is expert at balancing the needs and desires of different ages and interests — just one way in which they are expert… Continue reading
Cape Town offers spectacular coastal scenery. Photo from Cape Town Travel
Teaming with the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Cape Town Tourism invited Facebook users to send their virtual profiles on a “holiday” to Cape Town.
Based on users’ answers to various questions, their Facebook profiles could then experience customized itineraries in the South African city, with the players receiving regular illustrated updates on how their profiles were spending their virtual time seeing the sights and perhaps relaxing at the beach.
Those enrolled in the game — more than 8,000 players in all, who hailed from South Africa, the UK, the U.S., Canada, India, Germany and elsewhere —… Continue reading
Explore Europe on your own on a Rick Steves “My Way” tour. Photo by Catharine Norton
The recent well-publicized flap about George Zimmer — founder and longtime TV pitchman for the Men’s Wearhouse — being fired by the company he started got me thinking about the power of personality in travel product branding.
Zimmer and other celebrated pitchmen — notably KFC’s Colonel Sanders, Frank Perdue of Perdue Farms chicken fame, Wendy’s hamburgers Dave Thomas and popcorn king Orville Redenbacher — all became the public face of the companies they founded.
And when they died or became too old or too controversial and were no longer able or considered suitable to serve in that role, their companies all suffered to one degree or another. (This New York Times piece offers good background on the topic.)
I had to think a bit before coming up with an equivalent personality… Continue reading
Does it pay to create a baby boomer travel niche — to market only to baby boomer travelers?
Brian Luckhurst of homexchange50plus.com believes it does.
I’ve been lucky to “meet” Brian (in a virtual sense) through this blog. Brian and his wife Catriona live in London, England, and started their home exchange website four years ago, as a way to create an online business they could run when they retired. Because there was already a fair amount of competition in the market, they decided to specialize and aim just for baby boomers — the 50-plus crowd.
And they advertised that fact right in their domain name, so that all those searching for 50-plus travel could find it and know immediately that the site was targeted to them. (Members pay a small fee to list their home on the site and view other members’ homes for potential exchange.)… Continue reading
Overlooking the Atlantic in Casablanca, Morocco — a baby boomer favorite destination. Photo by Clark Norton
It’s been a widely accepted premise in the travel industry for years that Americans want shorter vacation options. The classic two-week vacation of days of yore has gone the way of nickel candy bars and Cokes, a relic of the 1950s. (Yes, folks, there once were such things as nickel candy bars and Cokes.)
In its place are “long weekend” trips or — if the traveler is really fortunate — a week to get away and recharge. Everyone is too busy, office work is piling up, the kids have to get back for soccer practice, the dog is lonely — all the usual reasons in a stressed-out society.
Understandably, the travel industry has responded by offering shorter tours, long weekend getaway packages, and other ways to feign a true travel experience without using… Continue reading
Boomers Atop Masada in Israel. Photo by Clark Norton
Baby boomers — the most-traveled generation in history — are ready to hit the road in record numbers as they gain more leisure time in retirement, but are you ready for them?
Boomers account for a third of all leisure trips taken and four-fifths of all money spent on luxury travel, yet many tour operators either take them for granted or ignore them altogether. One reason might be that they don’t know what makes boomers tick.
Of course, not all boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — are alike or think alike, but in general (like all generations) they have some key characteristics in common.
Here are five ways to attract more boomers — and their spending power — to your tours:
1. Avoid the terms “seniors,” “elder” or any implications that boomers are “old.” Boomers may be aging, but… Continue reading
Sugarloaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro. Is the beauty enough to overcome the obstacles?
The last two times I visited Brazil, I loved lazing on the beaches of Rio, cruising down the Amazon, hiking through the rainforests and touring the remarkable opera house in Manaus.
But jumping through the bureaucratic hoops to get there in the first place almost convinced me I’d never make it down. Brazil seems to do everything it can to discourage American visitors by making visas expensive and annoying to get.
The regulations keep changing. One time I had to wait in a long line at the Brazilian consulate in New York City, then go next door to a particular bank to deposit $100 cash and get a receipt for same, then return to stand in another long line to hand that in along with my completed visa application, only to be told I would have… Continue reading
Baby boomers birding in the Caribbean. Photo from Carefree Birding
Many baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and were nurtured in the anti-war, civil rights and environmental movements have retained a good deal of their youthful idealism throughout their lives.
Surveys, including my own research, have shown that boomers in general are more likely to choose a particular tour operator if that operator gives something back to the localities they visit — whether to schools or health clinics in Nepal, conservation efforts in Kenya, environmental clean-up in Ecuador or other causes or charities.
Ken Burgener and Linda Warschauer, who run Carefree Birding birding cruises out of their Florida office, make it a practice to donate all the money they would otherwise make in profit from shore excursions during their cruises to various birding-related causes in port.
In Roatan, Honduras, for example, they donated the money… Continue reading
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