Travel that spans generations

The first time her family embarked on a long trip, Leslie Melson recalls, she was a testy 13-year-old crammed into the back seat of a station wagon with three younger brothers she could just barely tolerate.

“You want to talk about not getting along,” Melson says, laughing. “They were awful.”

But a lot changes in 35 years. So this past July, Melson, her parents, her brothers and their families – 20 people from 5 years old to 76 – chartered a luxury coach and spent two weeks exploring the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, she says, they rediscovered each other.

More Americans are embarking on such multi-generational or multi-family journeys, a trend in vacationing that has captured the attention and marketing efforts of the travel industry.

The number of people taking or planning group vacations is on the rise, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, travel analysts say.

About 38 percent of travelers took at least one trip last year that included three or more family generations, according to a survey by the Travel Industry Association, a trade group. Such intergenerational travel has increased steadily since 2000.

“Multi-generational travel is one of the more powerful phenomena that we’re seeing today in the travel industry,” said Allen Kay, a spokesman for the TIA, which surveyed about 1,300 travelers last October. “The baby boomers love to hit the road, and they love to take their adult children and grandchildren with them.”

In a separate survey last fall, 77 percent of travelers said they had taken a trip with extended family, other families or friends during the past five years. A quarter of those who had taken such trips said their groups included eight or more people.

“I think in times of turmoil, essentially people turn to family for comfort and solace and that now is really manifested in their travel behavior,” said Peter Yesawich of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, an Orlando, Fla., tourism consulting firm that conducted the survey of 1,700 travelers.

Yesawich says travel in large groups is a strong contrast with the trends through most of the 1990s. Many people, focused more on making money then on family, saw travel as a chance to unplug from a hectic lifestyle – usually as a couple or alone, without the kids or anyone else, he said.

But he and others in the industry say they started to notice a change late in the 1990s.

Executives at The Walt Disney Co. took notice of the change soon after the company launched its cruise line in 1998, said Linda Warren, executive vice president of brand management for the company’s parks and resorts. The business was aimed at family travelers, but the company was surprised by the number of customers calling its reservations center who asked to book seven or eight rooms together.

That signaled not just that people happened to be traveling at the same time, but that they were intent on spending time together and doing so in large groups, she said.

“Maybe people were doing it in the past, but it wasn’t the primary reason for making the trip,” Warren said.

Of travelers surveyed by Yesawich’s firm, 69 percent now cite spending time with family as very or extremely important in planning a vacation, up from 57 percent in 2000.

Melson, who lives in Dallas, says her family’s trips together have offered a chance to see spectacular places. In 2001, they followed a circuit through several national parks in the western U.S., retracing the journey she and her siblings made as children. This year, they worked their way from Canada’s Banff National Park to Seattle.

When she tells some people about the trip, they express disbelief that all those relatives could get along over so many miles. But Melson said the trips offered chances to spend time with each other that a day or two together would never have allowed.

“My Dad was able to tell the kids, without interruption, about his growing up on a horse farm in Kentucky and … it was a stolen moment,” she said. “It was just magic for that to happen.”

Andrea Martone of Port Washington, N.Y., offers a similar account of the cruise she took with nine family members this fall. Besides her husband and children, her brother, her mother, and her husband’s mother joined the group.

There were some arguments, and everybody had to make adjustments – compromising on dinner reservation times, or whether to sit in the smoking or nonsmoking lounge.

But the ship offered plenty of space for people to spend time on their own when they wished. And in such a relaxed environment, people were quickly able to put their disagreements aside and relish the time together, she said.

“There was a lot of heavy discussions, some of it about childhood, and some of it was about sickness, and there was lots and lots of laughter,” said Martone, whose family is talking about renting a villa together in Italy’s Tuscany region next year.

Such multi-generational or multi-family trips create challenges for both the travel business and for travelers.

Disney has responded by creating packages, marketed as Magical Gatherings and Grand Gatherings, booked by specially designated reservations staff. The agents work first to find and lock in blocks of rooms, then settle with travelers on details. Dinner reservations at theme park restaurants, for example, may be made up to 60 days in advance, she said.

Extra time is essential in putting together such a trip, said Melson’s brother, Steve Long, in charge of the planning for both of the family’s journeys, each of which took well over a year to put together. Many hotels and lodges remain uncertain over how to deal with parties that are larger than a single family but smaller than a tour group, he said.