Examining access to 18-30's club holidays for the more mature tourist

Abstract: This paper examines whether there is a current trend in more mature tourists choosing to take part in 18-30's holidays. It critically deals with the factors of ageism that tour operators use within their advertising and looks at how similar young tourists and more mature tourists are.

Key words: 18-30, Mature Tourists, Ageism, Lifecycle

Being a young tourist it could it be assumed that only young people aged 18-30 take part in club 18-30's holidays, however this particular topic identifies many of the key issues concerning the recent trend in more mature, older tourists taking part in these 18-30's club holidays. Surprisingly to the reader they are to discover that they are far prone to these particular holidays. With this in mind it can be hard to identify the difference between young and old tourists due to the aging population and longer life expectancy. (Sellars, 2004) discusses the statement 'Fifty is the new Thirty' and how this is altering the 'old' age. Therefore tourists over the age of 60 could be referred to as young in some cases depending on the opinion of that individual concerned.

This conference discusses the changes in the averages person's life cycle with the growing desire for starting a career rather than settling down early on in life. This then leads on to an increased number of single bachelors, over the age of thirty within the lifecycle resulting in them having fewer commitments so they can go on these 18-30's holidays without having to worry about their lives at home. Similar to this (Clarke, 2003) suggests that more mature tourists are often in the same position as younger tourists with no work or family commitments due to retirement and older children, making them ideal candidates for these holidays.

Here, the trend moves on to direct marketing, it could be argued and assumed to the reader that tour operators are trying to avoid promoting the 18-30's holidays to older, more mature tourists according to (Pritchard and Morgan, 2008) because they don't want them to lose their appeal to the intentional market by swamping the destination with older tourists as one of the main appeals of these destinations is meeting more young people. This type of argument leads on to a debate about ageism and whether this is unfair on the more mature tourists.

(Maccannell, 1999) comes to the conclusion that younger travellers and more mature tourists are very similar in their aims and objectives from holidays, they suggest that young travellers are interested in fitting as much into their holiday as possible, this agrees with the idea of (Clarke, 2003) who also promotes the idea that the more mature travellers also have the same intension because they are trying to make the most of the time that they may have left. Could this argument open up more evidence that mature tourists are interested in holidays designed for younger tourists?

During the conference paper some of the constraints that could hold both mature and younger tourists back when choosing a holiday are discussed by (Pizam, 2002). An argument is addressed that demonstrates that both of the age groups can be physically or physiologically affected by the same restraints. Following on from this a small survey was conducted by (Clarke, 2003) trying to discover if more mature tourists (over 40) and younger tourists have at all the same travel behaviours in terms of wanting the same from a holiday destination. Again the argument is opening up agree with earlier

On a closing point it could be pointed out that within the conference paper that there is a trend moving towards more mature tourists taking part in these clubs 18-30's holidays. However it could be added that defining a 'mature' tourist can become difficult because it is examined within the conference that as the population is living longer, people become a lot older so a former mature tourists may now be seen as a young tourist.


Clarke, J. (2003). A marketing spotlight on the youth consumer. Tourism Management. 13 (3), p321-327.

Pritchard, A., Morgan, N. (2008). Sex still sells to Generation X: Promotional practice and the youth package holiday market. Journal of Vacation Marketing. 3 (1), p68-80.

Pizam, A. (2002). Tourism Constraints among Seniors. Annals of Tourism Research. 29 (1), p106-123.

The strand chosen for this paper has validity in the instance that the suggestion is that this group of mature tourists are becoming more selective in their holiday choices and having some preference, to what could be perceived from the assumption of their usual choice, a niche area.

The paper holds a personal interest due to work experience within the travel sector and additionally in my own paper a form of tourism (cruise) has been discussed which is said to be extremely popular with this target group (although not acknowledged in the paper) so it was interesting to see a completely different holiday type associated with this generation.

This discussion paper acknowledges the current rise in life expectancy 82.3 for women and 78.2 for men (office of national statistics, 2011) and additionally the change in lifecycle wherein the onus is mow generally towards creating a successful career rather than settling down to family life. However it is suggested that failure to identify the difference between young and old tourists is a far- fetched notion and even more so to insinuate that a more mature tourist wants to travel on an 18-30 holiday, without the support of figures or previous research. There is some confusion as we are not informed as to the classification of a mature tourist although reference has been made to age 50 and over 40 when citing Clark,(2003), however the author rightly acknowledges this at the end of the paper.

With regards to direct marketing it is agreed that tour operators do promote this type of Club 18-30 holiday to a younger market and that incidentally they do advise an age limit of 35 (Thomas Cook.com, 2012), however this is suggested to be because of demand rather than ageism and that actually if there were a market for this from those 40 plus tourists, a private sector organisation would jump at the chance to profit from this said trend, after all this group of mature tourists are acknowledged as being one of the most influential group of travellers (Hartman and Qu, 2007).

Sellick (2004) identified nostalgia as a key motivation for travel amongst an older age group, however does also point out that the younger wealthier more educated 'mature' tourist are motivated to travel for discovery and self enhancement. This to some degree could agree with the author's point if the original paper was developed further.

The author supported by Pizam (2003) suggests some common constraints that both older and younger tourists have in common however fails to identify these in order to support her argument, additionally it is suggested that both younger and older travellers have similar aims in their holidays ultimately to get the most out of them, which is correct however suggested for different reasons. Carr (2002) identifies the hedonistic nature evident in younger travellers that would be classed as unacceptable at home whereas this is not suggested to be the case for a more mature traveller.

To conclude this commentary, some valid points have been raised that have made for an interesting paper that could be explored further from a variety of different angles.




Reference list
Hartman, J and H, Qu. (2007) The Senior travel market do's and don'ts Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism 8 (2) pg.67-72
Carr , N. (2002) The Tourism and Leisure Behavioural continuum Annals of Tourism Research 29 (4) pg. 972-986
Sellick, M.C. (2002) Discovery, Connection, Nostalgia. Key travel motives within the senior market. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 17 (1) pg. 261-289