Skift Take

Family travelers mostly prefer the upper-class hotel range when traveling, yet when it comes to alternative accommodation they are much more open-minded.

Last week we launched the latest report in our Skift Trends Reports service, Sizing, Behavior, Preference: Decoding The Lucrative U.S. Family Traveler Segment.

In our latest report we take family travel under the loop, from the sizing of the market to the key preferences among family travelers. Throughout the report we highlight the key differences in preference between family travelers and other types of travelers.

Below is an excerpt from our Skift Trends Report. Get the full report here to stay ahead of this trend.

A more recent development in travel more broadly is the mainstream adoption of short-term rentals, as an alternative to traditional hotels and resorts. Results from our Experiential traveler survey suggest the following trends. Avid travelers with children living at home have higher-end overall tastes when it comes to hotel class. Here it’s important to note that our panel screened for respondents that took at least two extended-stay vacations every year, and totaled a minimum of $50,000 in annual household earnings. This likely explains the higher-end tastes expressed in our survey results, particularly for respondents with children. Age is another consideration.

When it came to alternative accommodations, households with children were much more likely to have used a service such as Airbnb in past.

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Ninety-two percent of those respondents who never stayed at Airbnb were in fact above the age of 45.

When asking those who had never stayed at an Airbnb before about their openness to the concept we found that the majority of households with children “would consider it,” while those without children were not too enthusiastic about the idea. Roughly one-third “would consider it,” yet the other two thirds said “never” or “not sure.”

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This is the latest in a series of twice-monthly reports aimed at analyzing the fault lines of disruption in travel. These reports are intended for the busy travel industry decision maker. Tap into the opinions and insights of our seasoned network of staffers and contributors. Over 100 hours of desk research, data collection, and/or analysis goes into each report.

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Tags: airbnb, alternative accommodations, family travel, homeaway, research reports, vrbo

Photo credit: A group of children at Arapahoe Basin practicing their ski moves with an instructor. Family travelers are more likely to stay in alternative accommodations than singles or couples. Dave Camara / Arapahoe Basin Ski Area/AP Photo

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