Millennials are shunning cheap alcohol-fuelled holidays because they don’t look good on Instagram
Traditional 18-30 holidays are losing allure, as millennials opt for foreign festivals and destination hotels
IN THE Nineties and Noughties, the boozy package holiday was all the rage for Brits in their late teens and early twenties.
TV shows like Ibiza Uncovered glamourised the 18-30 vacations, where young men and women would get as drunk as possible on limited amounts of cash, then head home with a stranger.
But it turns out that the cheap alcohol-fuelled breaks have lost their allure, with millennials now ditching them for foreign festivals, posh hostels and destination hotels – in short, whatever looks good on Instagram.
Andy McKay, who set up the hotel brand with his wife Dawn after several years of running the famous nightclub Manumission, says that the youth of today are far more particular about their holidays.
Ibiza Rocks Hotel was the first destination concept hotel in Ibiza in 2008, catering for a new generation of music lovers and putting two fingers up at the traditional 18-30 style tour operators.
He told Sun Online: “The original youth holiday concept was revolutionary when it came out in the early 80s, but the pace of change has accelerated and young people nowadays are more discerning, educated and musically aware."
Andy continued: “When I was that audience’s age, gurning in a club at 4am is something you might regularly do, but that has changed thanks to the selfie culture.
“These days, people are much happier sharing their memories at a big daytime event, like the Ibiza Rocks Craig David parties, for instance.
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“Holiday partying has now become a daytime world, with a real shift in everything from what people are wearing to what they drink.”
The social media-driven world has had an enormous effect on both how people behave and their appearance.
Pre-camera phones, a holidaymaker could get as drunk as they wanted on cheap Spanish beer and just laugh it off the next day – these days it would be all over Snapchat.
Andy said: “There is definitely that element of it being more about what you can share online than the physicality of the moment and that’s a shame, but that has also had some positive effects.
“There has been a phenomenal shift towards healthy living, we see it a lot with the guys particularly,
where they are completely ripped with six-packs, thanks to gym each day and healthy eating.
“They don’t even eat chicken anymore, they call it ‘protein’, and alcohol is far less important.
“And in the main, people are also far more adventurous.”
The proof is in the pudding – while many of the traditional 18-30 tour operators have folded, destination hotels aimed at young people and foreign festivals are booming.
There will also be a market for the booze break, but according to reports, 767,000 Brits travelled overseas to a foreign festival in 2015 and the average 22 year old visited two live music events abroad.
The rise of hotels like Ibiza Rocks, where Stormzy is this year curating his own #Merky Festival, and Ushaia, which has followed the IB format of live performances within the hotel grounds, have also given rise to a new type of hotel catering specifically for Millenials.
For example, the , London, which aims itself squarely at the twenty-something market, has scrapped many of the old hotel favourites like bell boys and replaced them with super-fast WiFi and decent coffee.
A spokesperson for the hotel told Sun Online: “Our audience are very experience driven, just in a city break format.
“When they come somewhere like London, they aren’t interested at all in big tourist attractions – they’ve already tracked down the latest restaurant trend or secret event.
“They consume information so readily through smart phones and blogs that we see a lot more influence by info sharing instead of being dictated to by old tourist guides.”
According to a recent survey, more millennials said they were influenced by social media when choosing a holiday destination than they were by travel agents.
More importantly, they have better taste and they are afraid to demand change.
Forget the old trend for a cheap bed that you’d catch a couple of hours sleep in after a night on the town – these Millennials want every modern convenience.
The every Hotel spokesperson said: “We did a lot of research and what came back is that they didn’t want to compromise on comfort or price, but they didn’t need all of the bells and whistles like previous generations.
“The obvious things that they won’t do without are a fast free WiFi and complimentary mini bars because they won’t pay through the nose for a coke, and they wanted fresh coffee in their rooms, absolutely no granulated stuff.
“In return, don’t need any bells and whistles, or people pandering to them.
“It’s very much like the Starbucks culture – they want a top product but no table service.”
