‘Skip-Gen’ Vacations Are a New Family Travel Offshoot for Travel Advisors
Photo Credit: Grandparents are increasingly planning vacation with their grandkids. This gives them time to bond while the childrens' parents stay home. Austin Adventures clients traveling through Alaska's Kenai Fjords National Park. Austin Adventures
Skift Take
"Skip-gen" travel involving grandparents and grandchildren is an important market for travel advisors to pay attention to. Not only are grandparents more active these days, many see travel as a rare bonding opportunity with grandchildren.
While multi-generational travel has been gaining momentum for some time now, the even hotter trend may be for “skip-gen” trips where grandparents and grandchildren take off together and leave the parents at home.
Skip-gen travel was a major focus of the 2019 Family Travel Survey jointly conducted by the Family Travel Association and New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, which reported that 37 percent of the grandparent respondents intend to take their grandchildren on a trip during the next three years. Most said they desired to bond with their grandchildren by spending extended time with them.
Active Grandparents
“What’s driving skip-gen travel is that many grandparents these days are healthier and more active than they were in the past,” said Rainer Jenss, president and founder of the Family Travel Association, an organization for travel advisors and suppliers focused on family travel. “A lot of grandparents told us they wanted to pass down
