Five million Australians, one quarter of the population has over 50% of the wealth of this nation and many industries including travel are still not tapping into the possibilities they present for sustained growth. It was only a few years ago that the first Boomers turned 60 and all discussion was around how to turn all that so called retirement and retirement money into profits for industries like travel. Well before anyone got into serious discussion the GFC took a bite out of that money stashed in ineffective superannuation funds and people forgot about the possibilities.
Fortunately or unfortunately time marches on for the Boomers and things improve and once again the discussion is how to engage them and pry the money from their wrinkly grasp. Well that’s the first mistake industries can make, because they will never be seen as wrinkly (especially the ones prone to needles and chemicals), they see themselves as an indiscriminate age somewhere between early years and just before their best years finish, whenever that might be. As cloudy as that sounds remember Peter Pan was written for this generation and if industries don’t recognise that, then they have no chance of being engaged with a pot of gold.
To spend their hard earned cash with you, they have certain expectations. They want you to engage their curiosity and to pamper and spoil them. They want you to know they are young at heart and to credit them with a lot of intelligence, after all how else did they end up with all the money on the Monopoly board? They want you to re relevant in your approach and to celebrate their optimism in the future, a future that for many is a good couple of decades longer than any generation have ever lived.
A current ANZ survey found that 92% want to travel around Australia and 70% want to travel overseas in the next few years. That’s a lot of people for any industry and for travel it has certain challenges with the main one being, there is no defined Boomer market approach. Interestingly we can discuss the youth market in terms of backpackers and gap years with defined strategies from companies like Contiki yet where are the Boomer alternatives? The challenge is the market is so big that no one has come up with a defined plan to tackle the wide interests of the Boomers.
So most current strategies are defined around niche market sectors for the Boomers but that in itself is a problem because niche refers to specific segments of interests and not the broader population. I remember years ago a high profile coach touring company coming up with dedicated brochures marketed under the “Autumn Years” to try and attract the so called Boomer money. Of course it was not patronised and was quickly taken down from the shelves as Boomers do not want their relaxed years ahead referred to as Autumn.
Social technology is seen as a panacea for many in travel when it comes to reaching more of the Boomers but they need to be careful as Twitter and Facebook et al are more the regime of the next generation and although Boomers can be found there, they are not the most engaged of the social media population. The appearance of human contact via the net is not enough for the Boomers and to push social media as human contact is seen as poor substitution for customer service.
Like the lure of selling something successfully to a small portion of the Chinese, Boomers are the pot of gold for travel if only someone could come up with the right strategy to attract them all. Will you be the first?
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