UF Researcher: Elderly Vacationers More Than Tour Bus Passengers

June 29, 1998

GAINESVILLE — Older tourists are ditching the bus tour and ocean cruise stereotypes, opting instead for more active vacations that include sports, shopping and even archaeology, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Too often we think of leisure travel in the golden years’ as mass organized tours setting off for the Grand Canyon or some other famous site,” said researcher Heather Gibson, a professor in UF’s department of recreation, parks and tourism. “I found that many older people are not necessarily interested in traditional tourist attractions, preferring to meet the local people, learn about ancient civilization or even tee off at a nearby golf course.”

By 2020, as the graying of America continues, it is estimated that one in three Americans will be age 50 or older. That group will be the largest segment of the leisure travel market, but little is known about their travel patterns and preferences, she said.

Gibson surveyed 116 men and 138 women between the ages of 50 and 89 who lived in Greensboro, N.C., during the summers of 1996 and 1997. She found across-the-board similarities as well as differences by age and gender.

“The first five years of retirement, many people were very busy traveling — to Australia, Europe, the Middle East, all over the place — often spending many hours in the library researching where they were going to prepare for their trip,” Gibson said. “Around the age of 70, there was a shift away from this need to travel. People would say, We’ve seen it all. We don’t need to see anymore.’”

Particularly popular were vacations where they immersed themselves in learning about the local culture and meeting the local people, similar to anthropologists, Gibson said. While overseas, some took a special interest in archaeology, visiting old castles or the ruins of ancient civilizations, for example, she said.

“Increasingly, older adults are realizing that learning can be fun, as well as enlightening,” said Elderhostel President Stephen H. Richards. Overall, the number of people in Elderhostel programs — offered in more than 700 countries — continues to increase each year despite the demographics for adults over age 60 being relatively flat, he said.

Many retirees over 70 eventually found they no longer had the time to travel as they took on greater amounts of volunteer work with community and church groups, Gibson said. What little time they did have was spent closer to home with their adult children and grandchildren, she said.

“Often they traded a Elderhostel trip for a family vacation at the beach,” Gibson said. “One man said he played 17 games of Putt-Putt because it gave him time to spend with his grandchild. Rather than having to run all around the world and see what’s out there, simple things became more meaningful.”

Sometimes a spouse’s death discouraged whirlwind travel. Many who suffered such a loss said they didn’t want to revisit places they saw with their wife or husband, she said.

Lack of a traveling companion was a big obstacle for women in their 70s, who as widows outnumber men, Gibson said. For that reason, nearly three-fourths of women over 76 reported they were most likely to go on vacation with a group, she said.

“Even though we tend to think of older women as being vulnerable, many were still quite active,” she said. “One 79-year-old woman told me that in the last year she had been on seven cruises and had also been white-water rafting.”

Health constraints were a greater problem for men, affecting about a quarter of them between 66 and 75, Gibson said. Women didn’t report health problems to be a barrier until they were 76 and older (32 percent).

In another gender difference, women were more likely to name shopping as a favorite vacation activity, Gibson said. Recently, more outlet malls are opening near major tourist destinations, as in the case of Orlando, to capitalize on the vacation market, she said.

Men were much more likely than women to say that when on vacation they liked to engage in their favorite sport, usually golf, Gibson said. Because these women were part of a generation that grew up before Title IX, the federal law mandating equity in athletics, they likely have less experience with sports than their younger counterparts might have, she said.