Travel Industry Feeling Spry as More of the World Goes Gray
Photo Credit: A man walking on a beach. Older travelers spend a lot of money on vacations. Pixabay / qimono
Skift Take
Instead of doing nothing when they retire, older people increasingly want to travel more. This is good news for the travel industry but it needs to work out better ways to target the baby boomer generation.
Travel is as guilty as any other industry of sidelining older people in favor of the younger generations.
In one sense this is nothing new. Youngsters have always seduced marketers. What is different, however, is the number of people in their 50s, 60s and 70s who want to travel and more importantly how much money they have at their disposal.
By 2050 16 percent of the global population will be over 65, double what it was in 2012, according to the World Bank. Not only will older people be more prevalent, their attitude to travel is also changing, especially in richer countries. And new research from brokerage firm Bernstein suggests the travel industry will benefit.
“Our analysis of the UK (which offers the best data) finds the over-65s have driven most of the travel spending growth over the last 15 years, especially in the last five (when growth in spend per trip has been +11.5 percent per year),” t
