Pent-up demand is growing, says Silver Travel Advisor managing director Debbie Marshall
Self-isolating, working from home, social distancing, furloughing, taking part in Zoom meetings – these have fast become part of our new Covid-19 vocabulary in the past few weeks. For those now finding themselves at home, unable to work due to the furlough restrictions, a whole new way of life has begun, devoid of interaction with office colleagues and daily routine based around a job.
In some ways, it’s a bit like retirement, of reaching a certain age or a long-awaited reward after 40 years in the workplace – except that it hasn’t been a matter of choice.
Older people are dealing with the crisis in different ways. Those in the vulnerable group are self-isolating through necessity and not leaving the house for 13 weeks. For those with a decent pension, a garden and someone to talk to, it’s not too bad, and there’s great British stoicism in making the best of it.
Healthy and wealthy retirees, typically in their 60s, are also familiar and comfortable with being at home, although they miss their grandchildren and, of course, their holidays. These are the active silver travellers who might have been on their third cruise of the year by now, with more holidays and trips already booked throughout the year, in 2021 and even 2022. In fact, much of their retirement planning has been based around fulfilling a travel wish list, which is now temporarily in lockdown.
Spare a thought too for new retirees, the ones who had only just retired at the start of this year, and were looking forward to the excitement of later‑life adventures, only to find these abruptly brought to a halt barely before they’d got going.
Tackle concerns
There will be light at the end of the tunnel. At Silver Travel Advisor, we are confident older people will be keen to travel and cruise once restrictions are lifted.
It won’t be quite the same though. There will be concerns about getting home from the other side of the world should the inconceivable happen again. Concerns too about getting insurance: government advice that the over-70s should not cruise makes it currently challenging for anyone in that age group to purchase a policy which includes cruise.
There will also be cautiousness about healthcare and how travel might become more risky for certain health conditions.
These are all valid concerns and ones that the industry will need to address with expertise, reassurance and personal solutions. While older people have become much more adept with technology, we believe they will value more than ever the one-to-one service that can be offered by their local high street travel agent when it reopens, or a friendly consultant on the phone.
Whet appetites
Older travellers are using their enforced time at home to research and plan, to travel virtually and to dream. This was taken to a brilliant extreme by Miles Morgan Travel clients Mr and Mrs Hodges who, in lieu of their cancelled trip to Jordan, took a bath together in their Somerset home with a box of Dead Sea salts, sunhats, glasses of wine and the heating turned up. Providing people with engaging and gently amusing content and ideas has never been more important to whet appetites for the future and keep travel brands front-of-mind.
Once we are free to travel again, retirement won’t be about staying at home in slippers and tending to tomatoes in the greenhouse; the spirit of wanderlust will not be diminished. We recently asked our members where they would like to go once they are free to travel again and received a deluge of responses – from Cape Town to Canada, European cities, cruises and adventures. The list was long and pent-up desire high.
As one of our members put it: “I don’t mind where I go when this is over. I will go anywhere. Why? Because it will be ‘no place like home’.”