This was published 1 year ago
Ageism in the travel industry: Luxury resorts and others dismissing older travellers
By Lee Tulloch
Older travellers are the ones who can actually afford to stay in luxury resorts.Credit: iStock
Coastal Grandma is a newly defined style category which is getting plenty of attention on TikTok and in the fashion press.
Who is a Coastal Grandma exactly? Well, poster girls for the look are Diane Keaton, who effortlessly conveys the style in movies such as Something's Gotta Give, a romantic comedy set in the Hamptons, and Meryl Streep in It's Complicated and Hope Springs, both films about couples trying to reignite the spark in their marriage.
Coastal Grandmas wear pale, loose, graceful clothing, cashmere wraps, linens, straw hats, with youthful, long hair, giving off easy coastal vibes. They live by the sea, have beautiful kitchens, love cooking or pottering around the garden, walking on the beach with their Golden Retrievers and arranging flowers, which they do with big glasses of white wine in their hands. They fall in and out of love. They're over 55, privileged, and very white.
Diane Keaton is the epitome of Coastal Grandma Chic in Nancy Meyers' 2003 film 'Something's Gotta Give'.
On a positive note, "Coastal Grandma style" is one of the rare incidents when grandma and style are in the same phrase.
What does this have to do with travel? Well, I've been thinking of Coastal Grandmas and Grey Nomads and how our older members of society are shoved into categories. My thoughts were inspired by a conversation with a colleague, who had come across frequent blatant ageism in the travel industry.
In one case, a tropical resort popular with honeymooners had expressed disinterest in trying to attract older visitors because they weren't the right "market", as if people over 50 didn't ever get married for the first or even third time, didn't re-affirm their wedding vows, or weren't interested in romance and sexy tete-a-tetes on private sand bars.
Tell that to Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep.
"Honeymooners" are forever in their 20s and 30s to people with this mindset. It's an unfortunate misconception, because the last time I went to an island resort popular with honeymooners, many of the 28 guests were older couples. One couple chose to reaffirm their vows on their holiday. The other was a romantic proposal.
When two young honeymooners did turn up, they seemed far less loved-up than the more mature couples, who had the advantage of the perspective of age to appreciate their great good fortune of finding or holding a great love in their later years.
And these easily dismissed oldies also had the wherewithal for the expensive holiday. One family group on the island included two younger couples and an older couple. The parents had paid for the multi-generational trip for their children and partners. When not with their family, the parents took off and travelled the world on adventure cruises and safaris, the more challenging the better.
They're not the market for a luxury resort, then?
This is indicative of the kind of casual ageism that permeates everything, especially travel. Older travellers get lumped into two categories – cruisers and campers. It's very dismissive.
The cruisers, for instance, aren't necessarily content with Bingo and Trivia. There are singles cruises and swingers' cruises for a generation that was freer and more liberated than their children. An unintended consequence is the rise of sexually transmitted disease among the 65-plus age group, which is concerning enough for the UK's Health protection Agency to issue a warning about sex on cruises few years ago.
But it's not just sex. When you're running out of time you can become more adventurous, be open to new experiences, rather than less so.
There's also the assumption that everyone over 60 is retired with plenty of time on their hands. That's absurd these days. Not everyone can afford to retire. Not everyone wants to retire.
Younger people are starting to discover that a life away from an office or fixed address is not only possible but desirable in certain circumstances. The Grey Nomads, older travellers who turn life into one long road trip, are in fact trend-setters. They were doing it long before the Van Life movement favoured by 20-something digital nomads and influencers.
Visit any regional centre in Australia and you'll hear how older travellers in their vans were the stalwarts of tourism during the pandemic, providing small but welcome injections of cash into local economies.
Coastal Grandmas and Grey Nomads are having a style moment. Like Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, they can fall in love, run a business from their van, climb mountains or start a new life in another place. It's about time some people in the travel industry recognised it.
lee.tulloch@traveller.com.au
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