Who blows money?

March 15, 2006 4:40 AM

I am making a speech on product development in tourism, specifically heritage tourism today, and it occured to me that an interesting aspect to include was different spending habits of different age groups.

So what is the definition of "baby boomer" "x" and "y" and how do they spend their money. I have seen a lot about the different political and ideologicical view points, but money is the thiing here. Any ideas?

posted by stormygrey to Work & Money (5 answers total)

I take it you are talking specifically about the USA here, right? Those are essentially marketing labels which don't actually apply universally to places that didn't have a baby boom, or X or Y. In Japan, for example, "Generation X" applies to an entirely different set of paramters than in the US usage. I mention this only because, having worked in travel writing a lot, these definitions often skew US views on tourism.
posted by zaelic at 5:01 AM on March 15, 2006

I know of at least two masters theses written on these topics (age/education/purpose breakdowns of spending habits on tourism and in museum shops)- you might check a library.
posted by jmgorman at 5:12 AM on March 15, 2006

Response by poster: Zaelic, yes, I am speaking about US travelers at this point. I talk about the international market primarily though web presense and packaging, not this product side specfically, primarily because I don't know enough to talk about how international groups spend their money here.

Jmgorman, I don't have time to do this before this speech, but I would love more leads on how to find these theses without being affliated with a university library, what schools deal with these topics. I am fascinated. I come from a museum education background and kind of fell into the tourism bit. Thusly, I see heritage tourism as adult education, which obviously, a lot of tourism people don't.
posted by stormygrey at 5:20 AM on March 15, 2006

You'll probably find more than one definition for those names for "generations", but the very first result on google for consumer spending by age has one, along with a summary of the things each spends the most money on.
posted by sfenders at 5:39 AM on March 15, 2006

It's Euro-slanted, but TourMIS' Related Links might be of use to you, with Worldtourism.org, World Travel & Tourism Council and the Tourism Office Directory possibly being the most useful from the list. FIYTO specialises in youth travel and might have some specific data on that sector. Unfortunately, I'm not that familiar with the, er, baby boomer sector and its related organisations.
posted by romakimmy at 8:55 AM on March 15, 2006