In a recent Generational Travel Study released by Expedia on January 3rd, 74% of all U.S. respondents said they would prioritize spending their spare change on experiences rather than products. Nowhere is this shift in spending more evident than in travel. Seventy-one percent of Generation Z — ages 22 and younger — said they would get a part-time job, and 49% would sell some of their clothes or furniture to save money to go on a trip. Eleven percent would even postpone a breakup with a significant other in order to go on a previously-planned trip.
To learn more about this study, and also how the average person can save a few hundreds dollars off an upcoming trip, I spoke with Expedia’s Vice President of Global Communications, Sarah Gavin, on behalf of A Global Lifestyle.
For you, what was the most important takeaway from this study?
Sarah Gavin: For me, the biggest thing is that we really shifted from being a culture of stuff to a culture of experiences. If you think back to about 10 or 15 years ago, Sex & The City was on and it was all about the new shoes, the new dress and the new handbag. Today, 74% of Americans say that they would forego all of this stuff in order to travel, in order to have really rich, real-world experiences.
Company discounts aside, how do you usually go about making sure you’re maximizing both value and experience when planning a trip?
The first thing that you can do if you want to save money on your trip and use that money to invest in the experiences you’re going to have is book your flight and your hotel together. Call it “packaging” or “bundling.” You can save $600 just by doing that. At big resort destinations–like in the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii–you can save a thousand dollars like that. That’s real money that you can use to reinvest, to make sure that you have great experiences. The other thing is you can always book your hotel at about 10% off if you join the Expedia rewards program. It is free to join and 70,000 hotels all around the world participate in this program. That’s big money you can save on your vacation.
What’s coming up for Expedia in 2018?
There are a couple of things we study every year. Expedia also does this study to look forward to the year ahead. The best day to book your airfare is actually Sunday. It accounts for both economy and premium first-class. You also want to book pretty far out. Thirty days out is the sweet spot, so if you can book about a month out, you’ll save money. But there’s not a huge difference between booking 30, 60 or 90 days out. Once you hit that 30-day sweet spot, you’ve really got the best deal and the pricing remains relatively stable.
What was the last vacation you took?
Sarah Gavin: We’re a West Coast-based family, so the latest trip we took was to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It’s a great four-hour direct flight, really easy. For us, it sort of fits the bill for everyone in the family. We can lay on the beach, play by the pool one day, and then spend the next day doing some crazy activity. So we can go ziplining or get to know the local culture, or — believe it or not — my kids’ favorite thing to do is ride camels on the beach while watching whales. So there’s something for everyone in Cabo.
Finally, Sarah, any last words for the kids?
For us, because we have four kids–we’re Gen X-ers, they’re Gen Z-ers. They want choice, they want speed, they want a lot of different variation when we book a trip. We always want the big ticket items–the hotel, the destination–but we let our kids choose the experiences. They can choose what we’re doing on any given day and we can know that they are booking it through a trustworthy provider, which gives us a lot of peace of mind while still giving them some really great experiences.
