Millennials: The New Travel Trendsetters

Millennials - the generation that is known for their desire to travel - are transforming the travel industry with a new travel trend that is focused on experiences and culture, personalized itineraries, and decisions highly influenced by social media or user-generated content.

What do recent travel statistics reveal?

Millennials are making travel a priority more than other generations, as you will see from the 2019 data gathered from various sources below:

• Millennials already make up 20% of all global travelers.
• 82% of millennials traveled in 2019, compared with 75% of all other generations.
• Millennials travel the most—- 35 days each year to be exact.
• Millennials take 5.6 trips per year, compared with 4.4 (Gen-Z), 4.0 (Gen x), and 3.5 (Boomers).
• Millennials are 23% more likely to travel abroad than in older generations.
• Millennials are most likely to spend more money on vacations than other age groups.
• 1 out of 3 millennials is willing to dish out $5000 or more on vacation—- the most cash of any other age group.
• 86% of millennials choose a new culture over 44% who want to party and 28% wanting to shop.
• 97% will share travel experiences on social media, with 2 in 3 postings once a day.

See more: Condor Ferries, Business Insider, South China Morning Post

As the age group willing to spend the most on travel, millennials have become trendsetters for the travel industry at large. For them, life is all about the experiences. As they travel more, they crave for experiences they want to curate for themselves - not just general vacations. They are not satisfied with being beach bums; the main goal when traveling is to immerse into a new culture, which includes sampling the local cuisine as an important part of their travels, too.

Furthermore, social media has undoubtedly added fuel to the millennial travel craze. They are inspired by what they see on social media and plan their holidays accordingly. Combining their deep desire to travel with the technology they possess on their hands - smartphones - it is hard to find this tech-savvy generation in any one location.

Let us try to understand more of this through the following responses from Tara Cappel, founder of For the Love of Travel, on a conversation with Jeff Fromm, an expert on Millennials, Generation Z, and the impact of purpose and sustainability:

On the role that travel plays in the lives of millennials, she said:

“Millennials don’t just see travel as something we do, we identify with it. We consider ourselves citizens of the world and we have an enthusiastic desire to immerse ourselves in another place and return rejuvenated, inspired, and ready for our next adventure. We are travelers.”

When asked what millennials look for in travel experiences, she answered:

“Millennials are constantly visually stimulated and we have been our whole lives so it’s not enough to see a place - we want to soak up the very essence of the destination we visit.”

She further notes that travel is the new form of social currency for millennials:

“Travel is the apex of experience and thanks to social media, experience is the new social currency. For millennials who might not be able to afford a fancy car or big house, status gets displayed in other ways. It used to be that designer clothing was how young people showed off but fast fashion has made high-end looks attainable for the masses and knock-offs are effectively unrecognizable. Now, who cares if you don’t have the latest ‘it’ bag if you just got back from learning to make ravioli with a local chef in Tuscany, with plenty of pics to prove it.”

And explaining why curated experience is important she mentioned:

“We’re at a point technologically where everything can be found online. This was great for consumers at first because it meant they didn’t need the help of experts like travel agents to plan their own trips. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, we’ve reached a tipping point where there is just so much information that it’s a full-time job to sift through everything. On top of that, the internet is a bit of a wild west so it can be difficult to tell what’s genuine and what’s not.”