VITAL STATISTICS

Older travelers present a world of opportunity

SV: What makes you so bullish on the upper-end of the travel market?

FRANCESE:  A couple things. One is very simply the aging of baby boomers. This generation of people coming into their sixties has more money to spend on things like travel. In fact this age group spends the most money on travel. The 55-64 year old population is growing three times faster than the rest of population. You look at this and say there must be an opportunity here someplace. In reality that opportunity has existed for seven or eight years and will continue to be robust for at least the next 10 years and maybe beyond that.

Most of the older baby boomers are now empty nesters. Their children have left home and when their last child graduates college they suddenly appear to have vast wealth they never had before. It may not literally be vast wealth but it’s a hell of a lot of more disposable income than they’ve ever had before. Most people, by the time they are 60 to 60-plus, have the mortgage paid off or at least substantial equity in their house. The cars are usually all paid for. Whatever moneys they are making they can spend.

 How do you think older travelers could affect the Seacoast tourism industry? Post your comments here!
Older travelers present a world of opportunity

SV:  How can travel agents take advantage of this demographic trend?

FRANCESE:  It seems the way they can do this is thinking about how the market has changed.

I heard about a travel agent recently who bills himself as the thinking person’s travel agent. In other words, don’t just book a flight to Ireland but also set up a tour of the antiquities, the famous restaurants, meetings with the chef of the restaurants, curator of best museum. That’s the sort of thing they do. People think ‘Gee I’ve never been to Spain; I’d like to go to Spain. Well, what’s in Spain? Perhaps they have the usual beaches and golf courses. But suppose the travel agent had a meeting set up with someone from the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Wouldn’t you like to know about how that spectacular building was put together and how it transformed what was a gritty, industrial city? That’s a different kind of tour, where you learn something about a subject you always wanted to know more about.

SV:  While the New Hampshire Seacoast and Southern Maine aren’t exactly exotic, their economies rely on tourism, how will changing demographics affect us closer to home?

FRANCESE:  I think you’ll find the tourists who come here in their 20s and 30s may still want to play on the beach. When you have small children life is fairly constrained as to what you can do. They may not be as interested in fine cuisine or chefs. They just care more about having fun with their kids, so in that sense I don’t think the young tourists expect anything radically different.

However, the older tourists, who may be purchasing second homes here, are looking for a different thing and it seems to me there is an opportunity for places like Exeter, my hometown, to really and truly talk up their history. Exeter is hip-deep in history. Half the downtown is historic buildings and yet they’re just there. The Independence Museum is a phenomenal resource but is not as well known as the Peabody Essex or Plimoth Plantation. I think a lot of tourists might be persuaded to come to hear a lecture on the Declaration of Independence and see the original broadside copy they have. And this is not to take anything away from Portsmouth which is equally rich in historic places. But does the average tourist have a clue as to the extent and breadth of Strawbery Banke?

SV:  There are some who say that the public has lost interest in historic attractions preferring amusement park rides.

FRANCESE:  Amusement parks are very popular with families with kids, but they are a disappearing demographic around here. The fact of the matter is a larger and larger proportion of tourists will be older empty nesters. If you advertise and promote historical tours of Portsmouth and Exeter you’ve got to make them interesting. Promote art tours. There are hundreds of artists on the Seacoast. Perhaps one might arrange a meeting with a local artist and talk about how they do a sculpture or painting. I think that would be successful. Many older tourists are looking for food for the mind. Remember: the unique things we have to offer are history, art and food.

You put together this area’s top quality food, art, music and history and you can’t tell me we don’t have something to sell. You’ve got a package that makes the whole eastern half of Rockingham County a very interesting place to visit and I haven’t even begun to talk about Star Island, the Isles of Shoals, the Great Bay, the rivers and estuaries.

SV:  What haven’t I asked you about tourism that I should have?

The difference between the Seacoast of New Hampshire and, say, Lyon, France is that when you go far away you tend to stay a long time. You tend to stay a week, two weeks. In the Seacoast we tend to think of tourists coming for a weekend, or just two or three days. When talking about tourism in the Seacoast area we need to think in those two different time frames. Someone coming from the Midwest, the South, or Canada, might not want to see just historic places here but also take the time to go down to the Peabody Essex or the art museums in Boston or Portland.

We may be suffering opportunity loss because we think only in local terms. It seems to me someone who lives in Portsmouth or Exeter is just as likely to be a member of the Portland Museum of Art as the MFA in Boston. Both are within an hour of here. An hour, that’s nothing for somebody visiting for a week or two. We need to think regionally for longer term visitors.