Aging Baby Boomers Lead Trend to Genealogical
Tourism, Study Finds
Aging plays important role in choice of tourism and
genealogical travel is way of attaining a view of ourselves in
connection with the past
March 5, 2010 - For the work-weary, the word
“vacation” may conjure images of leisurely, carefree days at the beach
sipping umbrella drinks. But according to published research by a
University of Illinois expert in tourism and recreation, genealogical
tourism is one of the fastest growing markets in vacation travel because
it represents a conscious shift away from relaxation and into the realm
of personal enrichment and fulfillment.
The increase in popularity of genealogical tourism
reflects contemporary tourists’ preference for authentic, lived
experiences over the bubble-like environment of an all-inclusive resort
or a pleasure cruise, says U. of I. recreation, sport and tourism
professor Carla Santos.
“Genealogical tourism provides an irreplaceable
dimension of material reality that’s missing from our postmodern
society,” Santos said.
Traveling to the old church where one’s great
grandparents used to worship in rural Ireland, or buying a loaf of bread
from a tiny grocery store in the village where one’s grandmother was
from in Greece create a critical space to imagine and feel life as a
form of continuation, says co-author and U. of I. graduate student Grace
Yan.
The study, published in a recent issue of the
Journal of Travel Research, also asserts that the popularity of
genealogical tourism is due to living in a world where mediated,
inauthentic experiences have become such an ingrained part of everyday
life that we’re almost unaware of it.
“Genealogical tourism capitalizes on this by
allowing individuals to experience the sensuous charms of antiquity, and
provides a way of experiencing something eternal and authentic that
transcends the present,” Santos said.
In academic analyses of the 1980s and early 1990s,
tourism was seen through the lens of an escape from the reality of the
workaday world. Today, scholars approach travel and tourism in a much
more complex and nuanced fashion, the authors said.
“We believe that movement is due partly to the
increasing sociological awareness of the post-industrial society that we
currently live in,” Santos said.
“With tourism studies developing a more
sophisticated interpretative paradigm, more meanings of tourism have
been discussed in academia, including the hunt for exoticism and
experiencing nostalgia.”
The movement away from escapism toward personal
enrichment in the last 15 years is also a baby boomer-influenced trend.
“According to our research, the baby boomer
generation now constitutes the primary profile of genealogical
travelers,” Yan said.
“Aging plays an important role in defining a
person’s choice of tourism, and genealogical travel is contemporary
society’s way of attaining a more coherent and continuous, albeit
imagined, view of ourselves in connection with the past.”
The authors say another part of what’s contributing
to the rise in popularity of genealogical tourism is the diaspora of
races, cultures and ethnicities in the U.S. longing for an authentic
connection to their roots.
“Diaspora definitely plays an important role in
popularizing genealogical tourism,” Santos said. “Individual cultural
and ethnic identities exist in fragmented and discontinuous forms in the
U.S. Traveling to identify with an unknown past seems to give existence
to meanings and values that the individual then carries forward on into
their present.”
Since diaspora is a ubiquitous condition in our
multicultural country, “our ancestors’ past seems less retrievable and
almost mythical,” Yan said.
The authors say that exploring, re-defining and
confirming our identities are life-long projects.
“A lot of us may feel that there’s a tension
between the need to feel connected and the need to be individualistic,”
Santos said. “Genealogical travel gives us a practical way to explore
those feelings and move toward a deeper understanding of our
identities.”
Genealogical tourism also serves as a
“communicative platform” for our doubts and fears about our
hyper-connected world, Santos said.
“Not only does it help to mitigate the desires and
anxieties about our age, genealogical tourism also encourages us to take
a more humanistic approach toward issues of belonging, home, heritage
and identity,” she said.
March 5, 2010 - For the work-weary, the word
“vacation” may conjure images of leisurely, carefree days at the beach
sipping umbrella drinks. But according to published research by a
University of Illinois expert in tourism and recreation, genealogical
tourism is one of the fastest growing markets in vacation travel because
it represents a conscious shift away from relaxation and into the realm
of personal enrichment and fulfillment.