Millennials are aggressively embracing the family travel trend, so much so that they are creating economic growth for tourism-heavy destinations. According to AAA, millennial travel is expected to accelerate this year, and 44% of millennials are planning a family getaway.
Millennials are also beating out their other generational counterparts when it comes to travel, as only 39% of Generation X and 32% of Baby Boomers plan to travel this year. It is predicted that millennials will spend $1.4 trillion on travel every year by 2020.
They see family vacations as a great way to create memories and reconnect with loved ones, according to Spokesperson for AAA Utah, Michael Blasky. Just like older generations, families go on multiple vacations every year to revisit their favorite destinations and experience new places as well.
So what does this mean for travel agents and booking sites? Well, millennials want more blockchain technology with their vacation booking. They want a decentralized network and immutable ledger system, making technology an ideal partner for the experience and personalized travel that millennials seek, according to Forbes.
More and more millennials are turning back to travel agents instead of using booking sites like TripAdvisor. In fact, 34% of millennials used a travel agent in 2016 over a booking website. Blockchain is giving them a very desired characteristic of travel booking: human interaction.
Because of millennials influencing power in the travel industry due to how much they travel, many blockchain-based companies are taking advantage of this shift in demographics and demand. Younger travels are shying away from bigger companies they feel are too corporatized or profit-driven and don’t care about their consumers, and they want their personalized experience given by smaller travel agencies.
For example, Cool Cousin, a recommendation platform, wants to turn its users into de facto travel agents. to take advantage of this new trend. When a visitor comes to the site looking for recommendations, other users, or “Cousins,” can participate and offer good advice while also earning rewards through the platform.
“Millennials are a time penchant generation that demands quality and this is what we enable in the travel world,” remarked Itai Nagler, CEO of Cool Cousin. “What we’ve learned from amazing services like Netflix and Spotify, is that when you give both – Millennials are the first to adopt and look at it as a dollar well spent.”