The term 'millennial' seems to be the talk of the town nowadays; people just can't seem to stop talking about them. From all sorts of news about what are millennials are doing, what trends they're obsessing about even down to what they're wearing, it seems that the millennials are pretty much dominating society right now.
But who exactly qualifies as a millennial? Apparently, those who are born from the 1980's onward can be considered as one. However, there are also many characteristics which are usually attributed to this particular age bracket, such as: highly digitalized or influenced by technology, somewhat lazy and often runs away from responsibilities. It seems that the study done by Gfk, a market research institute done in behalf of Airbnb reinforces and stresses the final quality since it showed that travelling is their utmost priority at the moment, beating saving money for their own home or car and even paying debt.
According to Hannah Meltzer of The Telegraph, the research mainly observed the travel habits of US, UK and China residents that are aged 18-35, which falls under the millennial demographic. The findings of the study are that, Millennials from the United Kingdom place travel as a higher financial priority for the next five years over buying a home or car and paying debt. They also deem seeing the world as slightly less important than savings. For those millennials in the U.S., while they consider savings as utmost concern, traveling still ranks higher than buying a house and/or car as well as paying debts. Chinese millennials on the other hand, showed the gravity of importance placed on traveling as compared to other priorities listed. Findings also expressed that 93 percent of the respondents from China consider traveling as a vital part in their character.
Meltzer also said in her article that, "the data, which is based on approximately 1,000 online interviews, and weighted on age, gender and other demographic factors, also showed that more than half of British and American young people are spending more on travel than they did a year ago - a figure which rises to 83 per cent for young people in China."
Another finding of the research is that the young population is highly likely to get inspiration for their travels from social media and the internet than from recommendations of friends and family. Aside from that, millennials are seen to be prone to planning their own itineraries as well as making their own adventures.
According to Donald Wood of Travelpulse, "millennials place more value on experiences, like interacting with locals, learning customs and eating native food. In addition, 83 percent of millennials in China, 56 percent in the U.S. and 55 percent in the UK indicated they are spending more on travel than they did a year. Part of the reason behind the affinity with travel is social media, which is a heavy influence on many millennials."
from Wall Street Journal: Millennials and the Rise of the 'Experience Economy'
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
