Budget Travel for Seniors: Why Today’s Seniors Urgently Need Affordable, Low-Cost Tour Groups

This generation of older people is the group to whom the tourism market owes the most.

01

Jinlw Jun had already encountered a very impressive incident.

One day, my retired parents living near my hometown in northwest China asked for help. They and more than a dozen other retired colleagues wanted to travel as a group and hoped that I could help find a reliable tour group.

Jinlv Jun took this issue very seriously and did everything necessary: ​​planning routes, looking for reliable travel agencies, looking for cheap flights and hotels. After much effort, I finally chose a 6-day, 5-night trip to southwest China, which I thought was “excellent in quality and very economical” with a total price of around RMB 4,000 per person.

Unexpectedly, my parents, after reading the plan, were silent for a long time, and then frankly said: This travel route should be very good, but none of our colleagues will want to go there. A few days later, their group signed up for a 7-day, 6-night tour to Hong Kong and Macau for RMB 999 per person.

Confused, Jinlv Jun asked three questions in a row: “Don’t you know that this is an inexpensive shopping tour?” Don’t you know that the route is very meager? Don’t you know you’ll be forced to shop?

Suddenly the parents sighed and replied: Not only the two of us know, everyone knows this clearly. JinLw Jun was even more confused, “You know it’s a trap, why are you still jumping into it?” My parents frankly said: Because this trip allows old colleagues to spend a small amount of money to go somewhere and have fun together. This answer made Jinlwa Jun think for a long time, it turned out that I had misunderstood their needs from the very beginning.

Jinlv Jun believed that the travel needs of the elderly were high-quality and cost-effective products, so he paid all his attention to designing the itinerary.

In fact, the real need of these elderly people is “a happy meeting of old friends.” Where to go and what to play are just social scenarios, and playing together is the basic requirement.

I wonder if you have noticed that older people especially like to “get together” when traveling, sometimes with relatives and friends, sometimes with colleagues and neighbors, sometimes even with the odd elderly person. When three to five seniors get together, they can always spontaneously form a tour group.

They are very willing to pay for communication, but are not willing to invest too much in the social scenario. This explains why many older people clearly do not lack money, but refuse to pay an extra cent for the tourism product itself and even sign up for such groups, even when they clearly know that these are “unjustifiably cheap tour groups.”

Roughly speaking, they “joined a tour group for the sake of socializing” rather than “signed up for a tour group for the sake of travel.”

02

Theoretically, demand creates supply.

Once travel agencies figure out the basic travel needs of seniors, suitable products should be available immediately. Unfortunately, satisfaction of this important need of older people is extremely poor. Why? Because it’s not profitable.

According to the needs of older people, relevant tourism products should be “reasonably cheap, targeted at target customer groups and very well-designed services,” that is, a product “at a reasonable low price for tourist groups.”

The problem is that such a “tour group at reasonable prices” product is easy to develop, but it cannot allow travel agencies to make profits through market logic. The reason is very simple. All aspects involved in this product require travel agencies to invest a large amount of manpower, material resources, financial resources and energy, but the price must be quite low, which seriously violates the laws of the market.

To meet this travel need of the elderly, only two types of travel products can satisfy it.

One type is high-quality travel products for seniors. The advantage of this type of product is that it can best meet the social needs of the elderly and provide very complete guarantees of travel services, but the disadvantage is that the price is high and it is only suitable for a very small part of the elderly group.

Another type is “unreasonably cheap travel group” products for the elderly. The advantage of this type of product is that the price is quite cheap, and it can also provide a certain level of tourism services, but the disadvantage is that not only the quality of service is poor, but also problems such as “forced shopping” occur.

In recent decades, the needs of older people have always existed and are becoming stronger. Most seniors, when they cannot find “reasonably priced tour groups,” naturally gradually turn to “unreasonably low-priced tour groups.”

Moreover, these travel agencies that operate “tour groups at unreasonably low prices” often fully understand the needs of older people. They not only provide a full range of related services, but also maximize emotional value.

Search online for any travel scams targeting seniors and there is a common thread: the sellers of these scam establishments are polite and diligent, taking care of the seniors 360 degrees with no dead ends during the trip and treating them like their own sons and daughters in everyday life, serving them constantly.

Older people love to get together, have parties and have fun. These scam organizations organize get-togethers, heart-to-hearts and social parties to allow lonely seniors to find like-minded people around them and then travel together in groups.

This is the main reason why older people end up in “unreasonably cheap tour groups.”

It’s not that older people are easy to fool, but they have their own accounts in their heads. The supply side didn’t give them enough decent choice, which led to them being forced to switch to “unreasonably low-priced tour groups.”

03

By this logic, doesn’t this mean that the “reasonably inexpensive group tour” products that older people desperately need cannot become available? Not necessarily. If normal market logic doesn’t work, why not change our thinking and lifestyle?

Recently, a local establishment made an interesting attempt to offer products for the elderly at “reasonable prices for tourist groups”, which was implemented in four stages:

The first step is to shift tourism subsidies for older people from subsidizing travel agencies to directly subsidizing older people.

Most older people belong to the “price sensitive group.” Targeting money to older people can give them a very visceral experience of falling prices on travel products.

For example, in some places, subsidy coupons are directly issued to local seniors over a certain age, and their children may also receive coupons on their behalf. When seniors use subsidy coupons to buy certain travel products, they can immediately get a discount of hundreds of yuan at a time, which they can clearly calculate.

The second step would be for the official to take the initiative to create an appropriate library of low-cost tourism products for local seniors and directly reduce major costs such as transportation and accommodation.

A medical tourism product center for the elderly has been established in one place, and local government-owned tourism enterprises are taking the lead in integrating disparate tourism resources such as buses, homestays and restaurants, and then purchasing them in packages at very low prices.

On the one hand, these scattered local tourism resources are revitalized and their operational benefits are greatly improved; on the other hand, packaged travel products are very cheap. Combined with targeted official subsidies, they can become true “reasonably priced group tourism products” for older people.

The third step is to place an entry point for purchasing such “reasonably priced group travel products” in places where seniors gather, such as local seniors’ communities, seniors’ universities and seniors’ associations.

This can not only ensure the accurate distribution of “tourism group products at reasonable prices”, but also meet the “social demand” of older people who like to travel in groups.

There is a Japanese company specializing in senior travel with 7 million members, annual revenue of over 10 billion yuan and a redemption rate of 65%. He relies not on cheap routes, but on the “social necessity of sharing a meal.”

The fourth step is for multiple departments to take the lead in creating a firewall to keep the “reasonably priced group tour” model for seniors from going astray.

As we all know, the main feature of running a business for seniors is high traffic and abundant capital. Many previous travel scams targeting the elderly have accumulated tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan through the sale of prepaid cards and member development. If a thunderstorm occurs, the negative impact will be enormous.

To put an end to this phenomenon, in many places, in an effort to provide senior citizens with “reasonably priced group travel products”, several departments will work together, especially to implement third-party custody of funds and prohibit misappropriation of funds, to ensure that senior citizens’ funds are within the red line set by law.

At the same time, some places have also introduced supportive policies and regulations that specifically prohibit forced purchases of such “reasonably priced group travel products” for the elderly, charging large amounts of prepayment, and other behaviors.

After the above four steps were completed one by one, “reasonably priced travel group products” for the elderly began small-scale trials and achieved the first results in some places.

Some people also wonder how long this kind of “reasonably priced tour groups” for the elderly, led by officials, can survive in the face of market competition. Objectively speaking, this model is still in its infancy. Whether this can ultimately work, how far it can go, and how long it will last remains to be seen.

This article is taken from the official WeChat account “Jinlv.com”, authored by Chen Zetigereat, and published with permission from 36Kr.