After experiencing independence, the reasons for the return to the family holiday for young tourists.

The family holiday is an essential part of a tourist's life cycle, as it will provide a template as to the type of holidays that they will go on, whether it is a sun, sea and sand holiday, or a cultural city break. However, there comes a time when the older teenagers in the family will want to spread their wings and travel on their own and in recent times the trend in Europe has been to destinations that offer the 18-30 style holidays. These types of holidays provide the teenagers to break away from the typical holiday that they go on with their family and replace it with the excitement of being away with their friends. Despite this, there are a number of teenagers who still want to go away with their families, which this paper aims to discover the reason behind this fact.

Whilst on a family holiday, the aim of it is to ensure that the activities that are done are suitable for the age range in the family. The younger the children are, the more attention is paid to their needs. As the child becomes older, there is less attention paid to them, as they can create entertainment for themselves. Throughout the process the decisions are made by the parents, no matter the age of the children and therefore the influence of the child can be seen as to have very little secondary influence on the decision making process. If there is any influence on the holiday making process, it is after it, when the parents will either recommend or discourage their friends or other family members to go to a destination, due to the child's experiences (Carr, N: 2006). If families take up the route of going to resorts, which have programmed activities for children, so as the parents can get away to do their own thing, the children, as they get older may feel restrained by this and the whole holiday experience for them won't be as enjoyable as if they had been left to do their own thing.

The new advertising campaign of Club 18-30 has created a feel that it is fashionable to go on this type of holiday with their friends, so as to escape their day to day lives and experience something new and exciting. As Carr found out, going on holiday with their friends to different parts of the world, allowed them to travel without their family, but also the fact that this new experience allowed them to escape their normal working lives, whether it was an office job or with them being in high education (Carr, N: 2002). The 18-30 style holidays provided these tourists with a chance to experience new activities, as well as breaking their normal day down, rather than watching TV or just going out with friends. It also enabled the tourist to meet new people, who were of their own age and have the same interests as them, for a more enjoyable experience whilst in holiday.

Studies have shown that there are a number of reasons for the older children to return to the family for holidays. One of the major reasons is the fact that due to people going to work or university, they don't feel as though they see the whole family together all that often and therefore the holiday is seen as catching up with what is happening in the lives of the family members, despite the restrictions that they may feel (Morgan, M and Xu, F: 2009). Another factor was that of the type of holiday or the destination that the family were going to. This was because if they had good memories of these types of holiday, then this would influence them, so that they would go on the holiday with their family and experience the holiday again as an older teenager. The final factor that influenced an older child going on holiday with their family was the matter of whether they were visiting other family members abroad. This was due to the fact that they may not have seen them all that often and therefore wanted to see them again or for the first time. This tended to be when the destination was a long haul destination, such as America or Australia (Carr, N: 2002). As well as this, travelling with the family would make the situation less intimidating for them, if they hadn't seen them for before or for a few years.

In conclusion, despite the need to travel abroad on their own with their friends and experience holidays, such as Club 18-30, there is a need for some teenagers to return to family holidays. The need to spend a week or two with their family, so as to discover what is going on with their lives is important for them, despite the restrictive nature of the holiday. As well as this, the memories held by teenagers maybe a deciding factor upon travelling with their family, if they have had an enjoyable experience in the past. And finally if they are planning on visiting family from around the world, they may want their family to introduce them to the other family members, who they may not have seen for a few years or not at all.

Bibliography

Carr, N. (2002). Going with the flow: An Assessment of the Relationship between young people's leisure and holiday behaviour. Tourism Geographies. 4 (2), p115-134.

Carr, N. (2006). A Comparison of Adolescents' and Parents' Holiday Movements. Tourism and Hospitality Research. 6 (2), p129-142.

Morgan, M and Xu, F. (2009). Student Travel Experiences: Memories and Dreams. Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management. 18 (2/3), p216-236.

This paper is well delivered, achieves the aim it stated, and fits well into the chosen strand. The lifecycle of the holiday of the teenager is looked at chronologically from the holiday experience as a child, to the 18-30 style experienced as a teenager and then going back to the family holiday. There was a good use of the tourists life cycle , and it is interesting to see that parts of it are repeated and revisited for either the same motivations to spend time with family or for different motivations such as security, and to revisit places with emotional connections.

There are a number of reasons used to prove that teenagers are returning to the family holiday, which further verifies the message in this paper, and uses references to back this up. There are mentions of marketing, decision making and preferences which shows that thorough research and models have been used in this paper. It is interesting how types of holiday have been looked at such as the resort holidays for families and 18-30 type holidays for teenagers, as this is what theory states is the typical holidays for the age groups. However, there are changing demographics in families and spending patterns, which may alter the type of holidays that are taken. It was also interesting the comparison of the two types of holidays that are taken by the young tourist, as there are different motivations for each holiday and a different level of involvement in the decision making process, especially with the independent holiday being more focussed on what the young tourists motivations, rather than a family.

When identifying the influences of decision making as a family when the children are younger, Gram (2005) argues there is a higher level of compromise with older children, showing that parents are more likely to consider what holiday the children want to go on and involving them in the decision making process. The main motivational factor that has been identified for the older children to return to a family holiday has been to spend time with the family, which due to lifestyle choices, which proves the need for interpersonal seeking motivational factor (Snepenger et al, 2006).

This is a well written paper with an interesting topic with good references and sources used to back up the argument, which clearly achieves the aim that was stated in the introduction, to discover the reasons that teenagers still want to go on holiday with their families. A way to develop on this paper further could be to identify different family types, as the modern family and leisure lifestyles are changing (Mintel, 2011).This could lead into different types of holidays that are taken by families as there are different holidays becoming more available and appealing to families.

References:
Gram, M. (2005) Family Holidays. A Qualitative Analysis of Family Holiday Experiences. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. 5(1) pp.2-22

Snepenger, D., King, J., Marshalls, E., and Muzaffer, U. (2006) Modeling Iso-Aholas Motivation Theory in the Tourism Context. Journal of Travel Research. 45(2) pp.140-149

Mintel Marketing Intelligence (2011) We are a (Modern) Family. London: Author. [online] [Accessed 14th November 2011] Available at: <http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen_academic/search_results/show&/display/id=572469>

Robert has written a very interesting and concise piece of work that fits in well with the conference strand. In my opinion the issues covered are very few and far between, however, what has been covered is well presented, explained and informative.

My paper is very similar to this one in the sense that it describes how celebrity behaviour has affected holiday taking by young families' more than single people. Many of my findings cross over with this paper. However, some of them are contradictory. For example, my research suggested that children can often be an important catalyst for family holidays, whereas Robert's findings revealed that children do not effect the decision making process. Moreover, research by Shoham and Dalakas (2005) on the impact of Israeli children on family decision making revealed that children have a fairly high influence on parents purchasing decisions.

The paper mentions that holiday taking decisions are made by parents no matter what age the children are. In identifying the role of distribution and strategies which are employed by family members when deciding on family holidays Therkelsen (2010:777) argues that as children become older they have a more direct influence on parental decisions, whilst when children are young; parents are more likely to make holiday purchasing decisions independently.

The paper features a number of reasons which proves that older teenagers are returning to family holidays and they are backed up with varied sources. This paper gives a good insight into these reasons whilst taking into consideration teenagers' motivations. The club 18-30 style holiday is briefly described using marketing material, and then linked to the holiday preferences and motives of older teenagers, which my paper shows is the most common demographic. By comparing these two types of holidays the author has identified that the motivations of the club 18-30 style holiday are much different from those of the family holiday.

Robert's discussion paper can be heavily commended on many levels as it has produced a clear insight into the reasons why older teenagers return for family holidays after experiencing independence. One criticism of this paper is that Robert would have benefited from examining further literature, as both my paper and literature identified in this commentary provides opposing views to Robert's research which suggests both sides of the argument were not always considered. The examination of this type of research would have allowed a more calculated approach to children's effect on family purchasing decisions and an overall catalyst to develop the paper further. A further point of research may need to establish the influence of the media on family holiday taking and drawing on research from authors such as (Kaur and Singh, 2006). They argue that the purchasing act depends on how children are socialised as consumers, and that family, friends and the media play a key role in the socialization of children, which causes family-based attributes such as sex role orientation, patterns of communication, and parental style to be important factors.

References:

Shoham, A and Dalakas, V. (2005) He said, she said & they said: Parents' assessment of children\'s influence on family consumption decisions, Journal of Consumer Marketing, 22 (3) 152-160.

Therkelsen, A. (2010) Deciding on Family Holidays: role distribution and strategies in use, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 27 (8) 765-779.

Kaur, P and Singh, R. (2006) Children in family purchase decision making in India and the west: a review, Children in Family Purchase Decisions, Academy of Marketing Science Review, 2006 (8) 1-30.