It has been said that 60 is the new 40, or 30, or 50. It’s hard to put any real value to this except to understand that today’s “senior” is fitter and more youthfully attuned. Oh, and nearly 10,000 Americans are turning 60 every day and will continue to do so over a span of about 20 years.
Extend this number outward to the world population. You can do the math, but what do you need to do in order to capture sales from this affluent, growing market? Are they online? What are their preferences?
In an article published Dec 2014 in Tourism Review statistics show that while 69% of people over 55 are using the internet to make purchases, when you look at travel, it rises to 80%. When you filter out the group to just those over 60 it rises to 91% booking online. So, how you cater to them on your website? Tourism-review.com goes on to report that,
“It is important that tourism boards, hoteliers and other business who are favouring web-based promotion and bookings take note of this trend within senior travellers and work with it. This data is the perfect excuse to continue development and innovation in online technology, applications and website content to welcome and support this growing number of older users. One way to encourage this new demographic is to give them more control over the specifics of their booking on the online form, such as specialised facilities at a hotel or airline seats with extra leg room, so they can be sure of securely dealing with every query and need via the website alone. Additionally, companies need to ensure that they offer easy navigation of their websites and information that is tailored to the age group.
Essentially, it all about going one step further to appreciate and nurture this growing group of tourism consumers and turn this new trend into increased business – more and more over-55s are connecting with these online resources, which is great, but these visits and initial interests still need to be turned into sales.” (In another related story, Chile has taken note of the advantages of senior travel. This is a pdf file.)
Here are some more thoughts. Why not create some adventure events for “seniors”. There are plenty of seniors looking for challenges that are geared for them like senior racing, swimming, nordic skiing. How about offering some senior tagged training programs like “learn how to kayak”, or “field walks to identify safe mushrooms and herbs”.
Contact us if you would like to explore how you can customise your products and put them online. We have staff to help you develop programs that fit all your markets.
Adventure Engine is perfectly suited to capture online sales directly from your customers of any age as it allows people the flexibility to identify preferences in diet, mobility, fitness, currency, even choices in language at checkout.