You are probably into wellness retreats, wineries, long lazy lunches and lazing around a swimming pool with a good book in the tropics somewhere, often in your own backyard of a country. When you are in your fifties, you are usually married with sprogs in tow, happily married with no rug rats to worry about, happily/unhappily divorced or super single and loving or hating it. No matter what or who you are, it's time to get your act together and travel the millennial way, as they are the ones driving and shaping the tourism industry with their tech-savvy, energetic antics and innovative thoughts.
The lines of travel diversity between age brackets are blurring; some twenty-year-olds are more tech-savvy than their thirty- or forty-year-old siblings, while mum and dad (that maybe you in your fifties) are as tech-savvy as millennials in your work lives, but you don't utilize these skills when in travel mode. It's time to unleash the young geek hiding in your cluttered brain and take a lesson from the millennial gadabouts.
Below are a few tips to modify or completely alter your travel habits to those of your millennial counterparts:
- Stop listening to friends or family about where you should go or what you should do for a holiday and make up your own mind.
- Open an account on Instagram and be seduced by some of the awesome destinations where photographs look too fantastic to be real.
- If you have never travelled solo, now is definitely the time to do it. Either leave the cat or child with a neighbour if you don't have a significant other. If you do, just run out the door one day. Your partner is a grown-up and surely can look after the domestic scene for a while. If this is beyond your partner's capabilities, then your family will appreciate you all the more when you return.
- Forget about holidaying with other families, which may or may not drive you crazy. That's your everyday urban life. A holiday is meant to be exciting, rejuvenating and fun.
- Go somewhere you have never been before that will satisfy your inner lusting; whether it's for white wine and sunsets while sitting on a mountain top or scoffing rich, creamy cheese in a quaint French village before chatting up the French person beside you in the name of getting to know the locals. Whatever you do, don't plan a holiday that you have done every year for as long as you can remember. Chase the excitement of the unknown in a new and exotic destination.
- Make sure you sign up for a no-fee bank card; even if you have to be disloyal to your own bank.
- Don't wear a money belt and make yourself a target for opportunistic thieves!
- Hopefully, the kids are out of school by now, so all of your hard-earned cash isn't going into paying school fees. This extra floating moolah can fund your trip.
- Forget about staying at a friend's plush holiday house (putting you in their debt) and make your own way in the world. There are some really quirky and amazing places to put your head at night, such as a cave or ice hotel.
- You should chase cheap flights on the Internet to get to an exotic destination, which you may or may not have considered going to before. There is no need to go to a travel agent; unless you can't negotiate a booking website.
- Don't plan every minute of every hour before or when you reach your destination. Rise to the impromptu opportunities that may happen with an open mind.
- Be adventurous when you first arrive at your destination and head out on the streets with your Google maps to help you, if you don't like getting lost on purpose.
- You shouldn't wait until you get home to make your friends turn a nasty shade of green. Splash your pics all over whatever social media you have managed to create a profile on.
There are the standard travel tips that you should know by now: pack light, learn how to haggle, don't leave your passport at home and remember any prescription drugs you may need.
The fact that 43 per cent of millennials travel without insurance is not the characteristic you want to follow. When you are in your fifties, you know that life doesn't always go to plan.
Gail Palethorpe, a self proclaimed Australian gypsy, is a freelance writer, photographer and eternal traveller. Check out her website Gail Palethorpe Photography and her Shutterstock profile.
