Over 50s Travel

There is a boom in Over 50s Travel. No real surprise there, you might say.

However, according to a recent study conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings, many of the Over 50s are turning to the internet to book their travel. In fact, it is thought that the Boomers are leading the way in Online Travel Bookings.

The study found that 86% of all of the so-called “Silver Surfers” aged over 50 visited an online travel site between October 2004 and September 2005. Over 1.5 million of them visited secure travel website pages in one month. Now, a little over 2 years later, that figure is likely to have exceeded 2 million visitors a month.

Neilsen claims that the Over 50s are the biggest users of internet technology when booking online travel. The most popular sites are Expedia and Lastminute.com

Overlooking Copacabana Beach, Rio De Janeiro

It seems that Cruise Lines are the big beneficiaries of these online bookings. Almost 50% of the visitors to Cruise Line websites are aged 50 or more. The Cruise Lines realise that Over 50s travel is not about getting on a coach, doing 10 European countries in 21 days, camping out and hopping from town to town. We are quite happy to leave this to the younger generation.

The Boomers have money to spend and they are in no hurry. They want to relax when traveling and they want luxury. This is not to say that we like to splash our money around. We want value for money. We’ve worked hard and now we want to enjoy the best years of our lives.

The internet allows us to research specific Over 50s Travel sites, forums and articles. We can do price comparisons, check packages and even put our own tours together without ever having to visit a Travel Agent. Some of the newer Travel Sites are getting very innovative. Never before has it been this easy for Over 50s to travel the world.

(this page is currently being updated)

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