And so the focus now falls on Gen-Z. The new buzzword du jour. Millennials are so passé, they should have stopped ageing if they wanted to stay relevant.
So what is it that Gen-Z wants? Are their travel tastes so remarkably different to millennials’? Simply put… They want exactly the same thing, so no.
The 2017 Luxe Report by Virtuoso claims that Gen-Z have considerable swaying power when it comes to influencing families’ travel decisions (88% of polled Virtuoso advisers).
It follows the logic that Gen-Z (born between 1998 and 2008) are raised in a state of ‘hyperconnectivity’, virtually accessing wifi straight out the womb… and therefore have a much more nuanced understanding of the greater world, beyond their immediate environment.
As a result, it argues that Gen-Z travellers are “interested in offbeat destinations with exhilarating adventure… personalized travel experiences, deeper cultural immersion, and Instagram-worthy design.”
I challenge anyone to claim that this is brand new information, unique to Gen-Z travellers. It recycles exactly the same ‘travel preferences’ ascribed to millennials and even generations before i.e. broad ‘themes’ that just about cover everything, from ‘camping and adventure’ to ‘shopping’ and ‘education trips’.
There comes a point at which these groups – whether they are baby boomers, Gen-X, Y or Z – are defined by arbitrary numbers. It makes sense on paper. It even sounds quite good. But the habit of defining consumer behaviours by age category is a problem that must end.
Drawing obtuse observations of consumer behaviour based on a group whose only key thing in common is their age, will do far more to obstruct genuine understandings of consumer behaviours than help it.
The hype surrounding capturing ‘the next big thing’ before having successfully understood what the differentiating factors are beyond age is getting a little bit ridiculous.
What the industry must realise is that preferences ascribed to any demographic they wish to target are conflated with new and readily available technology that give consumers greater choice. This access to choice works across generations, it isn’t limited to one.
It minimises the depth of understanding travel professionals can attain if they regard consumers through the reductionist lens of age alone. Yet, it feels as though the majority of research surrounding different age cohorts, focuses on how access to technology is the primary facilitator in influencing travel behaviour.
Make no mistake, technology is enabling easier and better travel for everybody, regardless of age category… whether the consumer uses it directly (e.g. booking through their mobile) or works through an agent who can plan a trip through company software.
By technology making access to travel so much easier, people naturally seek out the types of trip they always envisioned having. However, that doesn’t mean that the fundamentals of why we travel radically change. Technology enables us to travel but it isn’t necessarily the thing that shapes our travel tastes.
Labelling Gen-Z as being “globally minded” and “well-travelled” from an early age, as a way to understand travel habits within this generation, is a sweeping generalisation. It risks undermining the importance of so many other factors at play and how much they vary across the generation. Determining traveller tastes and preferences through such a grand assumption, is therefore problematic.
For example, technology presents the opportunity for a more globally minded generation through access to information, but it doesn’t pre-suppose that everyone actually will be. The internet has given the world access to infinite pools of data. We can learn just about anything if we are motivated enough to look for it. The types of information we seek, though, remain incredibly diverse.
It is the diversity of experiences people have growing up and how this shapes their worldview that will ultimately feed into differentiated travel appetites. The assumption also ignores how priorities change over time and how this too, can affect how Gen-Z will travel.
Remember: we are talking about at an age group of 9 to 19 year olds – people in the midst of adolescence and teenage angst, who likely haven’t figured out what they want to study at university, let alone who they are as travellers.
That being said, looking at a generation as a homogenous group isn’t totally useless. It can shape understandings of how cohorts use technology differently, and help companies target consumers through their preferred channels with relevant marketing messages.
So there are definite pros for paying attention to what young travellers are doing and their technological habits, as a way to figure out how to engage with them as they mature.
If we are to get any closer to understanding how travel habits and preferences are shaped, we need to stop falling for click-bait, hyperbolic headlines about how a single generation will “transform”, “disrupt” or “revolutionise” travel.
In a nutshell, the reason why ‘capturing the Gen-Z traveller’ will be challenging is not because this generational group have radically different tastes and habits to anyone else. Nor is it because the travel industry is too old-fashioned to keep up with them. It is because we, as an industry, habitually ignore the bigger elements at play. We look at the ‘generation problem’ as a greater whole, when really we should tackle it through the sum of its parts.
Lead image courtesy of Moyan Brenn via Flickr
