Generation Z impacts on families travel choices

Lately, Millennials have been one of the most promising targets, namely the generation born between the first half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s. As we have already reported, their travel habits tend to prioritise the experiential component, spending of 1 or 2 weeks each holidays, which allows an immersion in the local culture.

Over the years, a new generation started to influence the Travel & Tourism industry, namely the so-called Gen Z, which includes the young people born starting from the second half of the 90s. Even if, according to the Allied Market Research‘s data, Millennials are worth 200 billion dollars for the Travel & Tourism industry, Gen Zs are going to represent 40% of all consumers by 2020. 

According to the Virtuoso‘s “2017 Luxe Report”, the Gen Z preferences will represent one of the most important factors which are going to impact the families’ travel choices in 2017. Moreover, Virtuoso registered that the first 5 top destinations for the summer period will be Italy, Mexico, Hawaii, Florida and England, and a particular attention is paid to the local culture and to adventure tourism. In detail, Virtuoso drew up a list of the motivations which can possibly influence their families’ travels:

• wish to travel to unusual destinations (for example Iceland, Africa, South Pole);
• longer holidays, that often last more than 2 weeks;
• wish to have adventure travels including active experiences;
• immersion in local culture and life;
• the number of experiences they will be able to share on social networks;
• wish to have a thematic and personalised travel experience, for example sport-focused;
• preference for private accommodation, such as residences or boutique hotels.

In addition, according to the Allied Market Research’s report, this target has a common behaviour which needs to be analysed:

• short online attention span, of about 8 seconds, which is going to impact online marketing campaigns;
• a change in the social networks use: Facebook is being less used, in favour of other social networks, such as Snapchat. In fact, some operators of this sector are organising to meet this target demand. The famous hotel chain Marriott, for example, was one of the first to create an official page on Snapchat, while the low cost airline Wow Air launched a contest to encourage Gen Zs to become content creators and win prize trips;
• extreme attention paid to pictures and videos;
• experiential tourism, as for Millennials, is foreseen to be the favourite travel solution, with more attention paid to the budget due to the international social and economic scenario;
• a return to slow tourism is expected, to train travels compared to air ones. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Expedia launched a booking service for train tickets in Europe, to mark their presence in this sector;
• India will be a new origin market to observe, which is expected to stand up to China for the number of tourism flows.

At Twissen we observed that Generation Z is becoming more and more a target to keep an eye on, since it has already started to influence families’ travel choices. There is room for business when it comes to the online promotion sector, where being familiar to this target can help in taking the possible opportunities, also in a medium-long term view.

Martina Baldo

She graduated in Intercultural Development of Tourism Systems and she has a passion for foreign languages and cultures. Since 2016 she works as administration and tourism project manager at Twissen.