Baby Boomers and Vacations

As baby boomers turn the corner to their sixties and head into retirement, most travel companies are trying to figure out how to target them. In her new book, Turning Silver Into Gold, Mary Furlong says that most boomers are eager to travel and they are looking for out-of-the ordinary experiences including adventure travel, educational travel, and luxury travel.

It's not surprising that Boomers want to travel. Cheryl Russell writes in the latest edition of American Consumers, the newsletter from New Strategist, that Americans have the least vacation days of any developed country. She points out that on Americans get an average of only 13 vacation days a year and they have 3.5 million square miles in the U.S. (besides the whole rest of the world) to explore.

Says Russell, " The Europeans must feel sorry for us. The British get 28 vacation days a year on average, the Germans 35, and the French 37. And they have a lot less territory to cover. Maybe it is time for a new quality-of-life statistic, the How Much of Your Country Have You Seen Indicator, calculated by dividing vacation days by square miles times 1 million. Higher is better. The French have 37 days a year to explore their 211,000 square miles. We have 13 days a year to explore 3.5 million square miles. The French indicator is a lofty 175.2. Ours is a measly 3.7. You can bet the French are much more familiar with their geography than we are with ours."

Many Boomers have worked since they were teenagers and want to finally have some fun. This could be a problem, even when they have time on their hands. In their new book, Baby Boomers and Their Parents, George Moschis and Anil Mathur, point out that some boomers will barely have enough money to stay overnight in the motel down the road, let alone travel extensively and expensively. Still, those who do have money enough are ready to hit the road and looking for new, fun options with which to enjoy retirement.