The travel industry is talking about us, ladies, and about women’s travel. Solo and women’s travel was the chatter of a major industry event in December. And I recently spoke to a global forum and also to the African Tourism Board on boomer and women’s travel.

Here are the 5 top travel yearnings as we prepare to re-start:

The celebration trip: At this stage and age, birthdays, retirements, house sales, promotions, recoveries of health, and other ‘party worth’ events are sorely missed. The difference is most of us would like the party to be a trip. A trip is all about enhancing your life, not treating others to red velvet cake. Yesterday a woman called: I am retiring after 30 years and I want a bang out incredible trip. I earned it.. She chose Egypt! There is a traditional celebration trip in real time.

The experience trip: Women are not as keen on material possessions. We are more interested in experiences. Not that we don’t chose to buy leather goods in Marrakech’s souk, or that we reject sleek Italian shoes. The point is that we don’t travel to shop anymore. We used to arrange travel with Frommer expert, ‘Born to Shop’ author, Suzy Gershman. Those were real shopping trips with a world class shopper. Today we might come home with food products; most buyable are available in both the US and Canada.

We now travel for the thrill of a new experience.  An experience might be visual: Taj Mahal? A cobalt iceberg? The Andes?  It might be cerebral: visiting a school to understand how the US is perceived by Thai children? It might be sensual: a chocolate-based massage in Mexico? The point is we want the remembrance not the stuff. 

The ‘I always want to go trip’: This is usually a theme based trip. In our case, we hear this related to Tuscany and Cooking Tours.  The pandemic  delayed our gratification, so the always is even more intense as in I Must Go. Along with Tuscany, there is the ‘want to see where my family came from” travel. Heritage is in the limelight perhaps due to months of home bound reflections and photo sorting. Our travel diet is driving most of us crazy.

The bucket trip: For women the bucket trip is both cities like Paris and exotic islands like Easter Island or Bali. We are the generation who traveled for work, in the Peace Corps, Jr. Year abroad, $5 a day… Our bucket list can be unusual. It changes as new areas open to tourism and others fall from favor.  Novel and sustainable are in: Patagonia? Myanmar? SE Italy? S. India? Emirates? Oman?

Finally we have the Trip of a Lifetime: Egypt? Kenya or another safari? Name your own. And we know from this 2020 year, lifetimes can be shorter than expected. Not wanting to end on a negative note: vaccines are here/ testing at home coming in January / WTTC and Tourcare both established strict protocols to analyze safety of each country / tracking and QR vaccination certificates might be in the future. Today it was announced that pre-flight testing by major airlines will allow non quarantine travel to Europe. Yeah

Happy New Year to all our pals at The Three Tomatoes and their readers, and let’s get packing for 2021. The Women’s Travel Group.

Phyllis Stoller  phyllis@thewomenstravelgroup.com

Facebook: /toursforwomen/