When you were a kid, your parents packed you in the back seat of the car and took you on vacation wherever they wanted the family to go. Unfortunately, it was often an eight-hour drive to Aunt Mildred’s or a two-day drive to the national park with dead things that was supposed to be educational.

As a teenager, maybe you got to visit the national capital with your history class or to go on tour with the band or track team. You packed in a lot of time on old school buses, cheap motels, stuffy museums, and hopefully snuck in an adventure or two.

Finally, when you became a young adult and the world was your oyster, you crossed the country by any means possible, made your way to foreign countries to explore other cultures, and kept going until forced to settle down to a regular job and, eventually, a family of your own.

Then, it was your turn to pack the kids in the back seat of the car and you realized why family vacations were so popular: it was cheaper than going abroad, Aunt Mildred couldn’t be completely ignored, Mom & Dad wanted to see the grandkids, and – if you were lucky – they’d offer to take the them off your hands for a day.

But now everything’s different

As a Baby Boomer, you’re likely have more time and money now than you’ve had in your life. You also have:

• a better idea of what you like and don’t like about travel
• who to travel with and who you couldn’t be paid to travel with
• the limits of what you’ll put up with and the level of comfort you need
• experience that will keep you out of trouble in terms of health and safety, and
• fewer responsibilities that might keep you at home or, at least, you know how to delegate or hire someone to take care of them so that you can take extended vacations.

That’s why this is the best time of your life to travel! Even with the recent recession and the drop in housing values, investment portfolios and pension plans, Boomers are likely to travel a lot in the coming years. In fact, they’re expected to double the size of the tourism sector as pent-up demand from the recession combined with their increased leisure time drives the industry to record growth.

And guess what? We don’t want our parents’ vacations. In next week’s post, I’ll review what Baby Boomers are telling me they want out of their travels.

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