One-Minute Insights: Baby boomers to the rescue…others to follow.

Despite best efforts, the novel characteristics of the past year have meant that much of the travel industry has been working from a largely reactive position since March 2020. Available data have been mostly limited to what managing the COVID-19 environment looks like, but not identifying proactive solutions to what comes next as we move through recovery. The emergence of vaccination data is changing that, and the headline for the next two months might read “Baby Boomers to the Rescue”.

The Insight

In the nine weeks since vaccinations began in mid-December, folks of a ‘certain age’ have found themselves defining a unique (for now) segment of the economy. Baby Boomers, who are relatively wealthy, with time on their hands and sporting a new ‘suit of armor’, are emerging as an audience that marketers should be targeting for the balance of the winter season and beyond. As we overlay booking volume from Inntopia Commerce against vaccination rates, we see new booking volume (black bars) lining up very closely with vaccination rates, and almost directly with first dose vaccination rates (green lines). This is the first indication that the largest barrier to bookings in the past year, fear of infection, is starting to be overcome by targeted mitigation efforts within a specific and identifiable demographic, and marketing professionals should be proactively capitalizing on the information.

The Takeaways

1. To paraphrase a colleague, identifying a clear connection between vaccinations and bookings helps you move from “ready-fire!” to “ready, aim, fire!”.
2. While today’s discussion is Baby Boomers, it will be ‘50-Somethings’ tomorrow, and so on as vaccinations become more widespread. Consider launching ongoing campaigns to target different age groups as they become vaccinated.
3. In addition to tracking vaccination levels in your target markets, consider whether there’s an opportunity to promote your destination’s vaccination rate as a positive destination attribute.

Thanks to the Insights Collective for providing us with ongoing virus and vaccination tracking data. If you would like more information on this or any of our products, please reach out via our contact form or get in touch with your destination analyst.