In October, the Family Travel Association (FTA) released the results of its 2019 Family Travel Survey (page 8), and the responses revealed several opportunities for travel advisors.
Overall, while only 16% of parents used an agent to help plan a trip, when asked to give agents a grade, parents who have used an advisor gave them an A minus on average. This response shows that once advisors get the chance to plan a family vacation, they have no problem beating expectations.
In addition, this year — for the first time ever — the FTA looked at grandparents traveling with their grandkids,
known as “skip-gen travel.” More than 37% of grandparents say they are planning on traveling with their grandchildren in the next three years, and 44% say they would consider using the services of an advisor (but only 8% have actually used an agent for this type of trip). Clearly, this is a niche that has a lot of potential.
Other areas of opportunity include looking for more affordable family travel options (affordability was the top deterrent to family vacations) and encouraging parents to take all the vacation days they are entitled to (fewer than half of all families use all their vacation days, and 17% of families don’t even use half their days).
While the Family Travel Survey highlighted several opportunities for advisors, the percentage of families intending to travel continues to decline — down to 70% from 93% in 2015 (the first year of the survey).
Advisors and the industry at large should look at these results as a call to action. Helping families take more vacations would be a win for everyone — advisors, suppliers and, most importantly, families themselves.
To read more about the survey, go to the Digital Guides section of our website at www.travelagewest.com.
