Travel and tourism entities need to adapt to the expectations of Gen Z, defined as consumers in their teens, because it is unlike previous generations, said Carolyn Childs, co-founder of market research and marketing firm, MyTravelResearch.com.
Carolyn Childs
Gen Z members, born after 1995, are 100% digital natives. Growing up in an era of mobile devices and smartphones, they live in a world that is neither offline or online, but one seamless, interchangeable zone, revealed Childs in her online video presentation, Gen Z and Tourism Marketing.
As Gen Z are multi-taskers with short attention spans, marketers will have a much better chance of reaching them if they “game-ify” their offers and grab them quick with their marketing pitch.
If marketers don’t grab them quick with their marketing pitch, they will lose them in the blink on an eye, said Childs.
She added that one f the big challenges facing tourism marketers trying to woo Gen Z members is how to market nature and outdoor experiences to a generation for whom “playing in the street has gone”.
Other traits of Gen Z revealed in the presentation:
- Have global values and want results at the press of a button.
- Demand respect, respond well to visual media, and can process information quickly.
- Ready to engage with brands and new causes for the collective good.
- Proactive – see it as their job to make things right; perceive the world as damaged and compromised by the more selfish generations that went before them.
Gen Z born after 1995 are are 100% digital natives.
- Have little empathy with outmoded left versus right political parties, and see themselves as skilled, resourceful, flexible and comfortable working on their own towards a collective good.
- Neither anti-establishment nor counter revolutionaries. On the contrary they are the first generation in over 50 years that is comfortable showing respect to their parents. This may be because they will struggle to become home owners, and so need to stay close to their parents’ nest or nest-egg,
- Their innate comfort with mobile technology has earned them respect from older generations, who have more money but no instinctive digital know-how.
- Heavily influenced by post-financial crash values.
Images credit: MyTravelReseach
