IC TRAVEL AGENT April 2014 | Page 21

Aha! So That’s Why! I caught this book, author and superfast interview with the author Paul Taylor on the Jon Stewart show. It doesn’t really matter where you live, the information here would related to almost every country in the world – except for a few obvious non-players. You could change the title to The Next… and fill in the blank with the name of your own country. In a nutshell the information is pointing towards a number of trends that travel agents need to be ready for. This is a direct copy from the review on Amazon.com and it starts with this: The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. I suggest that’s going to be true for every country in the world and especially the countries opening up to more immigration and facing similar generational events as in the US. Every marketing website and journal is talking about the next generation and marketing to Millennials. So what’s a travel agency to do when, as the book points out: Today’s Gen YMillennials well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty somethings are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Okay, not every 20-30 year old has a low standard of living. Many are Presidents and CEOs of their own businesses. This next situation is happening world-wide as a certain age group turn 65 and retire. The word is for the US that: 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they’d hoped. If the retiring Boomer is under financed for retirement then that’s a challenge for the travel agency community who sells to this client base. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put 7G&W76W2