Youth Trends in the Travel Goods Industry

In the international travel business a flashpacker is a tech-savvy gen y world-traveler. The gen y demographic, also known as millennials, accounts for 20% of all dollars spent on global travel. If 20% of your sales are to 18- to 34-year-olds, you’ve connected with the flashpacker market. If not, you’re leaving money on the table. There is hope: if you’re not currently selling to gen y travelers, then your core business is probably their boomer parents. Show boomers that you have luggage they can buy for their gen y kids for trips or graduation presents, and introduce their flashpacker offspring to your store.

Who Are the Flashpackers?

FLASHPACKERS ARE VERY DIFFERENT from the penniless, frame-pack toting, Eurail-riding young people of previous generations.  ITB-Berlin’s World Travel Trends Report 2014 acknowledges “youth travel was long seen as a small part of the travel and tourism industry,characterized by cheap prices and low spending. However, the picture has changed in recent years, according to diverse studies.”  ITB-Berlin reports that“the World Tourism Organization estimates that youth travel generated $182billion (U.S.) in international tourism receipts in 2012…more than 20%.”Globally, fewer than half (45%) of18- to 34-year-old travelers are on vacation. Young globetrotters are instead abroad for educational purposes and volunteer work (43%) and 15% are business travelers. Among U.S. citizens,almost half (49%) of work travel is done by gen y and gen xers: 25% are 18 to34 and 24% are 35 to 44 (Travel Facts and Statistics, U.S. Travel Association). Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags.com, expands on the customer behind these statistics. “Millennials have a different value scale when it comes to work and life experience. They’re not as interested in making a fortune, they want to get out and experience the world. They’ll work for six months and then head to Costa Rica for three months with one backpack.” Many jobs available to millennials (whether traditional entry-level or knowledge-based jobs like computer programming) don’t penalize this type of fractured resumé. In the past 10 years youth travel destinations have become much more global. Europe has decreased slightly in popularity, while gen y travel to the Americas, Asia and Africa has surged over the last decade (ITB-Berlin’s World Travel Trends Report 2014).

Are you gen y-ready?

YOU MAY NEED TO UPDATE YOUR retail assortment with fashion-forward styles that appeal to younger consumers.Backpacks are beginning to replace the classic messenger bag as the personal item that gen y travelers bring on a flight. Make sure your personal item stock reflects the shrinking size of tablets and laptops. Gen y travelers have the latest electronic gear, and they don’t want or need a big bag for their tiny tablet.A personal item could also be a camera bag. Photography is a common passion for gen y travelers, but they don’t want to carry expensive equipment for their hobby in something that screams“camera bag” (a legitimate security concern). Dan Maravilla, co-founder of HEX, shared a bag designed to address this problem: the HEX Camera Gear Bag. The Camera Gear Bag sits upright and can be worn as a backpack. It holds camera or DJ gear with a separate storage compartment for up to a 15”Mac Book Pro and front iPad pocket.  Millennials often reject traditional luggage for international travel. No one wants to lug a rollerboard up three flights of stairs from the Paris Metro. Cobb’s experience is that “we sell huge numbers of a backpack called the TLS Weekender, not as a ‘personal item’ but as the carry-on bag and sole piece of luggage that is going to get efficient packers through two to three weeks in Spain. The TLS Weekender looks like a backpack but zips open and lays flat like a suitcase.” Cobb’s must-have list for an international travel backpack:it’s designed to work with packing cubes (which add organization and compression) while being small enough to fit tight international luggage requirements,and squishable enough to shove into the limited carry-on space available on small regional jets. When you’re picking backpacks for millennials, look for neutrals that aren’t black: the on-trend patterns featured in HEX’s Division,Hayward, and Westmore Collections will read as match-anything neutrals while standing out from a sea of black bags. Square backpacks (rectangular shaped,sometimes roll-top, and often made of waterproof fabrications like tarpaulin and waxed cotton) are the most fashion-forward of today’s travel backpacks. Many are large enough that they can be used in place of rollerboard luggage for multi-day trips, especially to foreign destinations with cobblestones.For those looking for a rollerboard with younger styling, HEX will be adding rollerboards to their collection, which they’ll be showing at The International Travel Goods Show in March 2015 and then shipping in fall 2015. Another high-style bag company to look for in the rollerboard category is EPIC Travelgear, based in Sweden but shipping from Seattle to the North American market from newly formed EPIC Travelgear USA by the time this issue goes to print. CEO James Krueger explains his company’s philosophy: “The gen y customer wants to be on-trend but also look different from everyone else. That’s not easy to design for while maintaining our unique EPIC Travelgear visual identity.” EPIC Travelgear’s solution to this design dilemma is something Krueger calls “managed madness.”  Krueger explains “take a little bit of risk, maybe 10%. And within that 10% really go crazy. If it doesn’t sell, just let it go. Close it out, move on. That kind of philosophy is where some of our wildly successful product ideas like our Kiss Signature Series come from.”  Krueger recommends following the managed madness philosophy across the supply chain, including retail buying. In Sweden, EPIC Travelgear’s best managed madness resources is LuggageLAB, which is both a storefront and a creativity lab for testing new ideas and then showing them to consumers (both in person and through social media). EPIC Travelgear has in-house production capability at LuggageLAB called CustomChromatix™. CustomChromatix™ allows EPIC Travelgear’s LuggageLAB to produce very small runs of luggage with hard-wearing personalized decals, painted graphics inside or out, and custom components for some models. Krueger describes the process: “You send us your jpeg, and within days we’ve printed your graphic with spray paint vinyl on your new custom luggage collection.” With CustomChromatix™, your gen y customers’ desire to have something different becomes a retail opportunity, not a liability. Career-oriented millennials do exist and they travel more for work than boomers. Companies tend to send their young, single employees out on the road, and flashpackers welcome the adventure. They may have to fly to a different city during the week to work and then fly home for the weekend. Road warriors want to leave their hands free as they walk through the airport so they can check email on their smartphones, so a significant number are choosing backpacks over rollerboards. Young business travelers asked eBags for a Weekender with a more polished look, which became the TLS Professional Weekender. It’s built with additional tech features, like a TSA friendly laptop compartment and an external adaptor garage. An important distinction between gen y and traditional business travelers is the degree of energy and exploration they bring to their business travel. When millennials travel for work they bounce around and explore, deliberately extending their work trip over a weekend. A lot of that spontaneous travel becomes less desirable after getting married and starting a family. This is one of the reasons the gen y business traveler is also attracted to stylish weekender-sized duffles like the Overnight Travel Bag by HEX. Duffles and backpacks have the advantage of camouflage: if you are between hotel check-ins, out exploring in your down time, you don’t look like a tourist.

Does your store experience (both brick and mortar and online) match the millennial market?

ADDING ON-TREND MERCHANDISE won’t help your sales if gen y customers walk right past your store or click away from your website. Updating the look of your brick and mortar and online storefront will be appreciated by your gen x and boomer customers as well as your gen y customer. Gen y, gen x and boomer travelers are all influenced by style and trend, enjoy researching purchases and/or buying online, and want both the best price and the best service. The differences are in degree. Gen xers and gen ys have a very similar aesthetic sensibility, but gen xers have a nostalgic enjoyment of mall shopping that was never developed in the gen y consumer. While some boomer customers love to be on-trend, as a group they tend to be tolerant of or appreciate traditional, rather than fashion-forward, design. So the boomer and gen x customer will come see you despite a dated façade and a classic rather than fashion-forward product mix, but gen y won’t. Ask for help: many manufacturers including HEX provide fixtures and POP to their customers, and some will customize them to match the visual identity of your retail space. For example, HEX recently powder coated fixtures black to match the existing look of BrandsWalk in Orange County. Plan your layout so your gen y merchandise is front and center to let flashpackers know you have something for them from the minute they walk in the door. And whether you sell primarily in person or online, you won’t be able to beat the pricing and selection on Amazon, but you can you set yourself apart through customer service and shopping experience. Maravilla explains one tactic they use on their small e-commerce website: “every bag goes out with a handwritten note on Letterpress paper in a black envelope sealed with a logoed sticker.” Is there similar level of retail theater you can deploy that complements your store and sets you apart?

Does your online presence represent the best you?

NO, WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT match.com, we’re talking about whether your website and social media interactions draw millennials in, or turn them away. If you’re not sure, get an outside opinion of whether you need to update the cosmetic look of your website. Everyone can benefit by adding more useful content such as travel information and packing videos. Cobb puts it this way: “millennials are nearly hard-wired to shop on the internet. They enjoy online research to find a product that fits their specific needs at the lowest possible price, it’s like playing a video game for them. I can’t tell you how many times my kids have taken my phone out of my hand and said ‘Dad, let me find that for you. Let me get you the best price.’ Going to a mall to shop, that’s not their idea of fun. They are time starved, shopping online from their phone is one of their lifehacks.” Whether or not you sell online, make sure your website is content-rich in order to engage the treasure-hunting millennial and get them in your physical storefront. Set high standards for your website: “We work hard to make our online communications compelling and informative, we’re proud of the fact that many of our instructional videos average three and a half minutes of viewing time,” explained Cobb.

Start the conversation: enlist help to enhance your presence on social media

ENGAGE MILLENNIALS BY USING the right platform: concentrate on Instagram, with a smaller emphasis on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You can use a free service like Hootsuite to pre-stage your social media communication across multiple platforms to push content out over a day or a week. Post images that tell a story or are educational, like a great packing tip or a favorite place to eat in Paris. Deemphasize product shots, unless they are extremely editorial, such as a bag with a wow graphic or feature. Carefully chosen friends and customers can “guest host” your social media account while they are traveling (this works best for Instagram). Krueger explains the EPIC Travelgear philosophy: “We view our company as a way to connect with people. The medium happens to be luggage, but that’s just a vehicle to share stories and communicate our point of view.” This carries over to the EPIC Travelgear social media strategy: “we’re in touch with the gen y traveler through Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. If you engage with your customer on social media be ready to listen as well as talk. Be humble. Take feedback, fix problems. Don’t greenwash. If you aren’t authentic the gen y customer will call you out in a public way. But if you are real, if you focus on fun, they will embrace your brand.” Social media is also a key part of eBags’ marketing strategy. In Cobb’s experience “because of the millennials’ addiction to technology they’re relatively easy to engage if you create content that is up to their standards. When we have our handbag-a-day or backpack-a-day sweepstakes on Facebook, the most youth-oriented bags get the most likes and shares.” Jenn Simon from Sea to Summit has also found that “gen yers love any online contest or giveaway. They also are attracted to engaging promotions that involve photos and videos.” Coming up with interesting content is one of the challenges of having a social media presence. Krueger’s advice: “being involved with our local community is one of our values, and also a great way to generate social media content. We sponsor professional cycling teams, they’re an ideal billboard and testing ground for a travel company.” For manufacturers social media is also a key part of the product development process. Cobb shares that “we use social media not only for marketing but also product feedback and development ideas, which we combine with the reviews on our website to inform warranty, R&D and purchasing decisions. All of the thumbs-down reviews go to a group within the company, are passed along to customer service to make right, are compiled and given to our brand partners, and inform our in-house product development.” Two examples of luggage developed out of eBags’ social media feedback process are the aforementioned TLS Professional Weekender, and the TLS Mother Lode Weekender Junior, which was designed for people with a smaller frame and shorter torso. Retailers can comb through their online interactions to inform future buying decisions and respond to unhappy customers. Just make sure you have a staffing plan in place to reply to customer service queries that come in through social media.

Millennials and the future of the travel industry

IN INDUSTRIES SUCH AS YOGA, Skate, Surf, and Bike Messenger/Urban Cyclist there was a moment where the products associated with the activity became an everyday fashion statement. Yoga pants went to the coffee shop, surf trunks were worn to school in Kansas, university students rode fixed gear bikes to class, backpacking clothing became walking-around-Seattle clothing and businessmen took their lunch to work in messenger bags. This is also the moment when people in those industries went from making a little money to making huge amounts of money. And in the same way, a luggage store could become a Travel Lifestyle store. All of these examples have a demographic in common: they were created by style conscious gen x consumers. The gen y customer is now driving retail sales, with the same potential impact in the industries most closely associated with a millennial’s sense of self. Travel consumers are universally proud of their status as world citizens. If you invest in merchandise your customers can buy and use year round, not just on trips, you give them the opportunity for (what a sociologist would call) enforcing self-concept through product symbolism. In English, that means they’ll wear a stylish travel wrap at the office and explain that they bought it for their last transatlantic flight. When they pull out their RFID blocking wallet they can tell the guys they need it for jaunts around Asia. And they can visit you between trips to buy more lifestyle items that they hope to use for travel…someday.

This article originally appeared in the Winter issue of Travel Goods Showcase.