The original package holiday generation is snubbing travel agents to book on the Internet as it perceives the high street to be too expensive.
The 50 to 69-year-old market is turning its back on the high street – the booking medium it used to make commercial air travel successful in the ’50s and ’60s – to become ‘silver surfers’.
Research conducted exclusively for Travel Weekly by marketing agency Millennium, which specialises in the mature market, reveals a derisory 13% of the grey market normally book their holiday through the high street while a massive 43% never use agents.
Nearly all of those who don’t use an agent, 97%, use the Internet instead, with 70% citing price as the most important factor.
Other reasons given for using the web instead of the high street include speed, ease of use, breadth of content and detailed descriptions. The research also reveals the mature market books with large online brands and looks out for ABTA and ATOL symbols. Fifty-two per cent rank ABTA/ATOL bonding the most important factor when booking online.
Market research firm AC Nielsen’s figures for March and April show 27% of people visiting travel-related sites are aged 50 or older.
News that the high street’s traditional core client base no longer views agents as the preferred booking medium is a blow for the trade, which has built businesses around these customers for the past 50 years – particularly as the research reveals they take an average of two holidays a year.
Cheapflights.co.uk director of business development Liz Faherty said the findings mirror the company’s experience of a rising number of older people using the price-comparison site. For the eight weeks to the end of April, close to a third of Cheapflights’ visitors were aged 50 or over.
The survey was completed online by 1,142 recipients.
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