Family vacations: seeking the exotic
Family vacations are shorter than ever but involve more exotic locations, according to a recent poll by Harris Interactive commissioned by Best Western International.
The poll also found that these trips are more elaborate and expensive, and tend to involve locations that older travelers sometimes remember from their childhood.
”The 2007 Best Western International Family Vacation Study also discovered that, contrary to popular opinion, children do not always determine where the family goes on vacation,” says the hotel chain.
For example: only one percent of adults polled indicated that the kids have the most sway in the decision.
Travelers are also more likely today to include pets in their trips over grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, the poll concluded.
Eighty-eight percent of US adults who take family vacations indicated that a getaway these days is different from when they were children. More than half claimed that today’s vacations are more expensive, while just over two-fifths (42%) said they now travel greater distances.
The study also found that more than one third stay in hotels more now than as a child.
While more than a quarter of respondents indicated that today’s vacations have become more elaborate than they remember (28%) and that they go to more exotic locales than they did as a child (27%), 19% say vacations have become shorter now than in their youth.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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