Rethinking millennials: how are they shaping the tourism industry?

Generational cohorts that form shared values, preferences, and beliefs throughout their lifetime are likely to represent longstanding behaviors including consumption and travel patterns (Bernini & Cracolici, 2015). These different shared experiences that imply differences of educational attainment, social norms, and socio-economic environment make a cohort dissimilar from another. Recognizing the homogenous features within its own generational cohorts, previous literature in tourism has suggested the generations as a useful method to segment markets. At present, millennials are rapidly becoming the most important generational group for the global economy in general and tourism fields in particular (Moscardo & Benckendorff, 2010). According to the study conducted by Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak (2000), generation can be categorized into four cohorts including (1) veteran generation (born between 1922 and 1943); (2) baby boomers (born between 1943 and 1960); (3) Generation X (born between 1960 and 1980); and (4) millennials (born between 1980 and 2000). Compared to other generations, millennials are familiar to smart technology (e.g. social media and mobile technology), facilitating for them to search information any time and any place, and make decisions as well as receptive to different cultures including languages (Benckendorff, Moscardo, & Pendergast, 2010). Indeed, millennials are described as tech-savvy, optimistic, assertive, goal-oriented, and confident (Chen & Choi, 2008). Accordingly, those millennials are willing to understand and admit diversity comprising ethnicity, lifestyle, and cultures in a society and easily take the dissimilarity compared to other generation cohorts. The evidence to demonstrate different values, attitudes, and behaviors of millennials in tourism is limited, as there does not exists substantial empirical support for managerial implications and suggestions. In contrast with other age-related market segments (e.g. baby boomers), little research has been conducted on how millennials are shaping tourism. With this realization, the purpose of this special issue in Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research (APJTR) is to explore millennials about a variety of issues – such as their travel behavior, career aspirations, generational characteristics, and market demands. Essentially, seven papers published in this special issue can be categorized into two focuses: (1) understanding the travel experiences of millennial travelers by collecting their response data and (2) comparing different travel behaviors/experiences between millennial and other generational travelers. The paper entitled “Analysis of Korean millennials’ travel expenditure patterns: An almost ideal demand system approach” demonstrated different travel expenditure patterns across different generational cohorts, in terms of food, lodging, shopping, recreation, and transportation. More specifically, they analyzed Korean travelers’ behaviors by applying almost ideal demand system in order to estimate the joint effects of travel characteristics. The millennial generation allocates a smaller share of their travel budget to transportation, leaving more for lodging and shopping relative to the baby boomer generation. Generation Xers, however, assign a smaller share of their travel budget to transportation and spend more budgets on lodging, food, and recreation than the baby boomer generation does. The paper entitled “Millennial ride-share passengers’ pro-sustainable behaviors: Norm activation perspective” examined how ride-sharing allows millennials to experience a destination. Employing norm activation theory, the study reveals that ride-sharing facilitates the activation of American college student travelers’ personal norms and pro-sustainable behaviors such as choosing locally produced products, experiencing local cultures, and supporting a destination’s environment. In addition, the findings indicate the mediating role of ride-sharing between travelers’ personal norms and pro-sustainable behaviors revealing that college students are more likely to behave sustainably when they interact with ridesharing local drivers. The paper entitled “Food tourists’ connectivity through the 5A journey and advocacy: Comparison between generations Y and X” investigated consumer decision-making process of food between generations