SWOFTY

I have just spent an exhausting three days at the World Travel Market at Excel catching up with all….went to an interesting talk given by Tourism Intelligence all about the rise of the 50+ traveller (*cough)…There are now approximately 1.6 billions over 50’s which is a bigger market than the whole of China and we apparently we want things to be different. We want to be marketed to in a new and interesting way. The “new travellers are the old travellers” because we have more time and money and can stay in places for longer. I was rather horrified to find that I am now even an actual “thing“. A “SWOFTY” no less – a “Single Woman Over Fifty” who likes to think that she is still young at heart and wants to go on adventure holidays. Apparently we also want experiential and personalised holidays and don’t want to see any brochures with old people in. Fifty is the new forty and all that…

There is also a name for a similar male – he is now a “MOCA” (Men Of a Certain Age) who are going through their mid-life crisis and want to wear leather and drive motorbikes.

Rather depressingly these two groups are not particularly homogenous – in that the MOCA’s want to hang out with women twenty years younger than they are. So I’m wondering if the SWOFTY’s are expected to hang out with the GOB’s ??? (Grateful Old Blokes – 70+)…..sigh.

It’s just not right.

This new world order.

Anyway, in the meantime here I am having a conversation with a bird (I’m the one wearing a lanyard)

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