Assessing Baby Boomers as a Viable Market Segment for Travel and Tourism

Your friend owns a travel agency Dreamers Adventure Travel. At some point it was a thriving business with a stable and diverse clientele. As people became more Internet savvy in the 2000s, the travel agency lost some business to people booking their own trips directly online. This negatively affected the travel agency’s profitability. At this point, Dreamers Adventure Travel is facing such a crisis that your friend may close the business.

You believe, however, that the Dreamers Adventure Travel could change their target market (formerly young urban professionals – yes, YUPPIES!) to include Baby Boomers, to increase revenue and their competitive advantage in the travel agency marketplace. Thus, you believe that Dreamers Travel could be more successful by tailoring their travel packages and services to each of their target markets.

Baby Boomers are largely entering retirement or are retired and many have a desire to travel (e.g., outdoor recreation, nature, adventure travel/tourism, cultural and historically important and exotic destinations, etc.). Clients in this market segment, on average, have enough discretionary income for travel and touring, like travelling in the groups of like-minded individuals, may have specific needs and preferences while travelling, and might still have a habit of turning to the travel agent for organizing their trips. You plan to build a tour/adventure travel experience package tailored to Baby Boomers’ travel preferences (potentially in groups) in the United States.

Your friend is intrigued by your idea but needs answers about to the potential demand and preferences among Baby Boomers. You decide to obtain these answers through research. The problem is that you don’t even know what you don’t know. You start planning and you ask yourself the following questions:

1. What research or evidence-based information is available so I can become more informed by others’ knowledge, experience and expertise on adventure travel preferences of Baby Boomers?

2. What print publications or online publications (e.g., journals, professional and trade magazines, mass media magazines focused on the target market) can I access to learn more before I invest additional time and effort?

3. Would focus groups with past Baby Boomer clients who haven’t signed up for trips or used your agency in a while be useful to tap for more insight? Why?

4. If past clients are not interested in sharing their views, how else can you get some insight from Baby Boomers in your target market (including the region your business is located in, which is Hayward)? Who should be the participants (e.g., any older adults, adults with specific socio-demographic characteristics, other travel agents)? Should the focus groups be mixed or same gender, age, race/ethnicity? Why or why not?

5. Based on key informants who have access to local Baby Boomers, (1), what types of questions would you include in your unstandardized/unstructured guide [a set of the open-ended questions] for the focus groups? ( Write 4-5 open-ended questions to explore the topic of interest. Consider order effects.)

Fast Forward: Let’s assume that you have conducted two focus groups with nine Baby Boomers in each group and obtained the helpful insights and data. Next, you want to use the insights from the focus groups to develop a sampling frame of the target population. For this brief survey on travel needs and preferences among Baby Boomers, you want to be able to make conclusions about the entire population and, thus, you need to be able to generalize the results.

6. Based on the data from the focus groups, what would a survey (a set of the closed-ended questions) look like? Some speculation/imagination is required here. Write 4-5 closed-ended questions to explore the topic of interest. Aspire for the highest level of measurement. Consider the order effects. Don’t include questions about the socio-demographic characteristics. Assume that they will be added automatically at the end.

7. Data Collection Method: Now, you need to decide how you will collect the data. (e.g., mailed questionnaire, face-to-face structured/schedule-standardized interview, telephone, online)? What data collection method will you choose? Provide a justification for your choice and explain the advantages and disadvantages the data collection method you are choosing. Please be specific.