The Evolution of Educational Travel for Older Adults

speaker-0 (00:07.342)
Hey folks, thanks for joining us today. Today’s guest is Kelsey Perry. Kelsey is the director of PR with Road Scholar. Some of you may remember them as Elder Hostel, but now they’re called Road Scholar. Kelsey, it’s always best to hear from the person that I’m talking to to describe themselves, their role and their organization. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

speaker-1 (00:33.006)
Sure.

well, I am from Wisconsin originally. live in Providence, Rhode Island now. and I studied creative writing in college and then I got my masters of fine arts and creative writing as well. So I’ve always been really interested in, in writing, but I, know, it’s hard to just be a novelist. So I always had advertising as my minor cause I thought marketing communications might be the direction that I would take. And so I got into travel, right after I graduated from grad school, worked for a luxury bike tour company first, and then came over to Rhodes Scholar about 10 years.

ago. It’s my 10th anniversary in May this year. So super excited and proud to have been serving the organization for 10 years now and I will probably be there my whole career, which is crazy to say. Millennials, you don’t hear that anymore. So it’s just a really incredible organization and incredible company culture. It’s a not-for-profit, which is really unique in the travel industry and just has an amazing

mission of education and learning and serving older adults that I’m really passionate about. And I feel really grateful to work somewhere that has such a great mission that I can really feel like I am fulfilled and contributing in what way I can to making the world a better place through opening the world of travel for more older adults. yes, did you have a follow up? ahead.

speaker-0 (01:50.406)
Well, was just, that was a lot about you and that you were hinting at Rhodes Scholar. But tell me a bit about Rhodes Scholar, because I’ll be totally honest, when I first started this podcast, I hadn’t heard of Rhodes Scholar. Yes. Maybe it’s because of my age, that sort of stuff. But tell me a bit about Rhodes Scholar.

speaker-1 (02:07.15)
Being Canadian too, we serve less Canadians than people from the US, so that might have been part of it, but we did have actually headquarters in Canada at one point when we were Elder Hostile. So yeah, I’ll give you a little brief history and intro into Road Scholar, a little Road Scholar 101. So we were founded 50 years ago. Last year was our 50th anniversary, and we were founded, as you said, in 1975 as Elder Hostile. And when we were founded back then, the format of our program

was a little bit different. We were taking older adults to college campuses in the summer when they weren’t being used and they would, the participants would stay in the dorms and they would take classes in the lecture halls and they would eat in the dining hall. So it was kind of more of like a back to campus experience for older adults.

looking for ways to be fulfilled during this time of retirement. And at that point in 75, retirement was still sort of a novel concept, a new idea, because, you know, social security was around now, people were living longer, healthier lives and older adulthood. And so they were looking for a way to not just, you know, not just be, you know, just not just sitting on a front porch and rocking in a rocking chair. They wanted to be fulfilled. They want to be stimulated and engaged and find ways to participate in society. So Rhodes,

Elder Hustle at the time was really at the forefront of the lifelong learning movement that was taking hold across America at that time. So over the past 50 years, we have evolved to be more of an educational travel organization. So today we stay in hotels, not college dorms. We started serving boomers and they were like, I don’t want to share a bathroom. I don’t want to stay in a dorm.

So the format of our our program started to shift a little bit. And then once we were not staying solely on college campuses, that meant we could have programs all year round and that, you know, there was no limits to where we could go. So we started to expand internationally. We now have programs in over 100 countries and 42 states, I think, right now. And we serve over 100,000 older adults every year.

speaker-1 (04:10.638)
70 % of them are women and 30 % are solo travelers and most of the solo travelers are women as well. So we have a lot of solo female travelers, which is a big part of what we do and something we kind of see ourselves as experts in. We also have grandparent programs for grandparents and grandkids traveling together as well as family programs for all three generations.

And we also during the pandemic, we launched our virtual programs, our Rhodes Scholar at Home is what we call it. And so we have one hour virtual lectures and we have multi-day adventures online. And so those are multiple hours of programming for several days in a row. And all of those are live and interactive. And we have at least two to three lectures every month that are free. So it’s a really great way to just get to know Rhodes Scholar. If there’s any listeners out there, any viewers,

that don’t know Rhodes Scholar and just want to get a little sampling of who we are and what we do, that’s a really great kind of entry way into learning about us. Off of the virtual lectures, we launched a new series of those last year called Age Well, and this is our first foray really more into the aging related topics. Typically most of our programming is more academic focused topics like Vikings in France or something like that, but we’ve started to develop more aging related

content and those lectures are always free. So that’s just something that we believe in and as part of our mission. So we started developing those last year and they, we piloted it and it went really well. So those are going to be a permanent part of what we offer too.

Because we’re not-for-profit, also offer financial aid in the form of scholarships and caregiver grants for full-time family caregivers. So anyone out there listening that might qualify for that, check it out. We even have a scholarship specifically for retired educators because of our educational mission. We attract a lot of retired educators, so that’s a big part of our audience and we want to honor them through scholarships. And we also have an award called the Educator Legacy

speaker-1 (06:14.388)
award that is active right now where people can nominate a recently retired or about to retire teacher to win a $5,000 Rhodes Scholar voucher to kind of launch their retirement. encourage anybody out there who that speaks to if you know if you are retiring or recently retired or if you know somebody who is please let them know about that it’s called the Educator Legacy Award on the Rhodes Scholar website.

speaker-0 (06:39.38)
I’ll take a look at that. Those lectures, what are the lectures on? Are they like just the history? You mentioned Vikings, so like the past history or is it? I remember.

speaker-1 (06:49.858)
that was like one of the first lectures I was actually on the team of people that launched the virtual lectures, March 2020 when the pandemic like when the whole shutdown happened. And the programs team was that usually develops programs, they were all busy like dealing with cancellations and all the craziness. And I had done some webinar work before. So they asked me and a couple other people to launch those. so within two weeks of the pandemic, we launched the first

virtual lectures and they’re even more popular today than they even were at the peak of the pandemic, is great. They’ve allowed us to reach people who cannot travel for whatever reason, but they’re also a really great supplement to travel as well to learn about a new destination, to virtually travel to Antarctica, maybe somewhere that you can’t physically go, whether physical ability is keeping you from going there or it’s too expensive for your budget or whatnot. the virtual lectures,

really run the gamut. could be something like Viking history, like I said, it could be something like sustainability in Costa Rica or, gosh, there’s just like so many different topics. We get them from all different places, but the lectures for those are the same lectures that you would meet if you went to Prague or if you to Argentina or on any of our programs, it’s the same people you would meet there. So it’s also a great way to kind of get to know some of our experts. And we also hear somebody will take some of the virtual lectures from one of our

most popular lecturers and then they’ll be like, now I really want to go to Peru so I can meet Oscar because he does such amazing lectures. So we’ll sometimes hear that it’s another way to get to know world scholars, group leaders and experts as well.

And then the virtual, I mean, I’m sorry, the adventures online programs, those are the multi-day programs. Those are more created to recreate the travel experience online as much as possible. So those are all small group. And so everybody is invited to turn their cameras on and engage in the discussions. There’s a group leader who’s kind of the host of the whole few days. And then you’ll meet different instructors who do different lectures throughout the week.

speaker-1 (08:53.07)
and then you’ll have live musical performances, virtual field trips, live discussions with the other participants. So it’s really meant to recreate the travel experience as much as possible online.

speaker-0 (09:06.094)
So that would be good for people that are homebound, that don’t have that capability of traveling that much.

speaker-1 (09:12.782)
Exactly. It’s allowed us to expand our reach and pursue our mission even more widely. But like I said, we also have people who go on programs with us multiple times a year and then they still like to do the online programs. It’s just, I’ve heard of some people who are like, I studied abroad in Paris, I’ve been there a bunch of times. I just love everything Paris and I just want to get as much Paris as I possibly can. So they’ll do the virtual, the adventures online in Paris and just to get every soak up every last fact or.

piece of the culture that they can. So there’s a lot of people that do it that way too. like I said, they’ll use it as a way to explore a new destination that they don’t really know about. Like if I don’t really know much about Malta, do I want to go there? Like maybe they’ll do a virtual program like that so they can learn a little bit about the destination and see if it’s a place for them to travel.

speaker-0 (09:59.694)
Does Road Scholar have any stake in the places that people are staying? Or is it more like just organized tours type thing?

speaker-1 (10:10.862)
Great question. So the format of the program, sometimes like I take for granted, I just think everybody is going to understand that. So it really is a group travel experience. So it’s a package adventure. So you enroll in the program. We use a lot of university academic language, like enrolling in a program rather than booking a trip. It’s just really kind of

speaker-0 (10:28.576)
legacy from where you came from.

speaker-1 (10:31.146)
Yeah, we see ourselves first as an educational organization and not as a travel, like as a tour operator, commercial tour operator. So we use a lot of that language. But you enroll in a program and you pay your tuition and pretty much everything’s included. So the accommodations, the lectures, there’s a group leader who’s with you the entire extent of the trip, who takes care of all the logistics and make sure you are where you need to be, make sure the bus is there on time, all that kind of stuff. And then

all the meals are included. There’s maybe sometimes one or two meals on your own if there’s free time at some point on the trip, but pretty much everything there is included. Even things down to like taxes, tips, you know, don’t even have to tip your guide unless you really feel like you need to if they went above and beyond. But those are all included for the bus drivers, the guides, everything like that. As well as our Road Scholar Assurance Program, which is like the…

the health benefits that come along with travel insurance. So if you’re on a hiking trip in Switzerland and you got hurt and you had to go to the hospital or something like that, you’re traveling internationally, those benefits are included as well as the 24 seven emergency assistance. yeah, it’s really kind of like a package experience.

speaker-0 (11:39.544)
So you were mentioning that originally it was at college dorms, but people didn’t want to share bathrooms, that sort of stuff. What’s the type of quality of the places that people are staying? Are they three, four star? What’s the quality there?

speaker-1 (11:57.08)
There’s really a range. So overall with Road Scholar, we have literally hundreds of programs with thousands of departure dates. Our goal is to offer as much of a breadth of programming as we can so that we have something for everybody. And so there is a breadth of different accommodation levels, activity levels, price points.

destinations, things you want to learn about. If you go to our website and you click on find an adventure, find a trip, I think it is now, you click on that, there’s tons of different filters that you can go and you can filter by destination, by budget, by what you want to learn about. There’s all different filters. So there really is something for everybody. So, you know, some programs you will stay in four or five star hotels. Some of them are more like three star hotels. And sometimes we have retreat centers as well, which are much more, you know, you know,

just relaxed environment, something like that. if accommodations are something that’s a priority for you, we have something that’s gonna fit, but I would say give us a call and our advisors can help you find the right trip for you. But in general, mean, our participants just, tend to attract participants who for them, the education and the learning is the first priority for them. And they’re less concerned about the level of accommodations. As long as it’s clean,

and the service is good and it’s in a safe location, that’s more what you’re gonna find across a lot of our programs.

speaker-0 (13:22.904)
mentioned early on that 70 % of women are taking these on their own. That’s surprising.

speaker-1 (13:31.406)
70 % of our participants are women. Though you’ll have to follow my stats a little bit. 70 % of our overall participants are women. 30 % of our solo travelers, or 30 % of our travelers are solo. 85 % of our solo travelers are women. So that’s a pretty big number. It’s literally like 20,000 women a year. And yeah, I mean, this topic like

you’re on target wanting to follow up on that because it’s just like to me is such a fascinating topic and I could talk about this for a whole other podcast, but I just find it so empowering, inspiring to see how many women travel solo with us. And solo female travel is really a movement that’s taken hold across every generation. But to me and what I’ve seen and what I’ve learned, it’s a trend that is led by baby boomer women.

And I love that. There’s not a lot of like trends that are like started by older adults. And I just think it, and then trickle down to different generations. I think the generation of boomer women are, you this is the first generation of women who could have their own mortgage and their own credit card and they had careers. And now that they’re retired, they have their own, you know, retirement money and they’re more financially independent. They’re more independent minded. Marriages are different. You know, if you think of the generation before like,

a woman leaving her husband at home to travel the world would have been much more taboo and unheard of than what we’re seeing with the boomer women today. So it’s just, it’s a real shift, a shift in society. And we’re just kind of at a point also where it’s more acceptable for women to travel alone. We did a study actually two years ago and found that 60 % of our travelers, our bar solo travelers are actually married and

traveling without their spouse even. So it’s not just single women. It’s not just single people. It’s not just widows, which we do get a lot of, know, divorcees. The divorce rate is highest among boomers and on the rise. So there’s a lot of divorcees. Obviously a lot, know, just statistically women outlive their husbands. So there are a lot of widows that travel with us too, but there are just also a lot of married women.

speaker-1 (15:38.68)
who are traveling without their husbands. And we asked them in the survey, why aren’t their husbands traveling with them? And the number one reason was they’re just not interested in travel, which is just fascinating to me. There’s just such a drive among women that is different than men to travel and to explore and see the world, especially in retirement, but across generations. So now this just gets my curiosity, feeds my curiosity more to study the men and why are they not traveling with us?

because there is really an epidemic in America and around the world of social isolation and loneliness, which disproportionately affects older men. And so it’s easy for us to just lean into the fact that we appeal more to women and just like gather those enrollments and make it easier to market to them. But to me, it’s important to think about the older men that are really being left behind in this because we know the…

health benefits that travel can give you in older adulthood, the confidence, the autonomy that can be brought with putting yourself out of your comfort zone when you’re traveling, getting to interact with different people and getting the social benefits of it are so important. And so to me, it’s important for us to do a study and try to figure out how we can appeal more to men. And so is it the programming that we offer or is it the way that we communicate and market to them? I would love to know if you have any thoughts on the topic.

As a man yourself.

speaker-0 (17:05.806)
Well, it’s not so much my thoughts. I had this conversation two and a half, three weeks ago in an interview. And the gentleman that I was talking to was saying that one of the things to keep in mind is that men and women are very different from a social point of view. tend to be isolated. They tend to do things on their own by themselves. And so to think that they get pulled into a social situation,

By and large, and keep in mind, I’m not saying everybody’s like that. This is just.

speaker-1 (17:39.758)
Yeah, we’re generalizing right for sure

speaker-0 (17:42.552)
But men tend to not socialize nearly as much as women did. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is because men have traditionally gone out of the house and they’ve been doing a lot of traveling and they get to the point where they’re retiring, they’re not looking to go traveling anymore. Been there, done that. I’d much rather stay at home because I missed that when my kids were growing up and that sort of stuff.

Whereas I can understand why my wife would then want to go traveling because she hasn’t been where I’ve been. That’s where I think. that’s, I suspect that when you do do your survey, that that’s probably where that’s coming from.

speaker-1 (18:28.258)
Yeah, I love, love those are both some inklings that I’ve had in commerce and you know, it’s come up in conversations that I’ve had. So it’s, it’s nice to hear that validation of another person having that thought and opinion for sure. Yeah. Women, they reach that empty nest stage and they are unencumbered by having to take care of somebody else and that they now have this, this time and the resources to be able to travel. so for them, it’s so much more of a pull because

didn’t have those opportunities, especially the boomer women, because you know society has shifted and changed for them now.

speaker-0 (18:59.246)
Next Friday, I’m interviewing Helen Dennis. Now she’s a columnist that focuses on aging, and she’s starting to shift into a focus on women as they age. I’m going to suggest that, I’m going to see whether she can arrange to have a conversation with you, because I suspect that you’re going to end up having an interesting conversation about women and traveling as part and parcel of that. It’s an interesting conversation.

speaker-1 (19:25.506)
Definitely. I could talk all day about solo female travel and the male side of it too, which I don’t know about yet because I’ve yet to study it, but I’m planning this year to put some resources into doing some surveys, some one-on-one interviews, some focus groups and stuff like that. So hopefully I’ll have more to share on that. Maybe when I have the study ready, I’ll give you a call back and we can do another podcast.

speaker-0 (19:46.35)
So what are some of the most more popular trips, tours that people take up on?

speaker-1 (19:55.852)
Yeah, definitely. So in the US, our national parks programs are the most popular. We have lots of active outdoor, which across around the world are really popular.

especially the domestic ones. The other ones domestically are our signature cities, which is where you spend six days, five nights in an iconic American city and to stay in the same hotel. And you just really dive deep into the local culture and cuisine and history and heritage of that city. So those are also really popular. We have Pickleball, which is kind of new for us, but are selling out. They’re amazing. We have multiple Pickleball programs. Astro.

Our astronomy programs in the travel industry, it’s being referred to as astrotourism. So astronomy programs have become really popular just recently. So we have programs where you’re going to do star parties in the Grand Canyon, they call them star parties, and dark sky reserves somewhere like the Grand Canyon. We have some in New Zealand where that takes part. Also we have two eclipse programs for 2027.

And then some Northern Lights programs as well, where you go chasing the Northern Lights. So those have all seen an optic very recently and are kind of trending.

As far as destinations internationally, lots of European destinations like Italy, France, Ireland, some really iconic places where people really want to check those off their lists and places like that where it’s like you can go to Italy six times and every region is so diverse and different from the next one. So there’s a lot of opportunities to return. Croatia is very popular. Costa Rica is super popular. It’s a really great. It’s not too far away. It’s a quick flight. The time zones are not that different, but you get to just really explore.

speaker-1 (21:34.8)
totally different culture and you know walk through the rainforests and swim in waterfalls and learn about wildlife and everything like that so that’s really popular. Our campus of the year, every year we pick a campus of the year and this year our campus of the year is Greece so we’re seeing lots more enrollments in our Greece programs.

speaker-0 (21:54.535)
When you say campus of the year, you’re really using that as a term for the region as opposed to a university.

speaker-1 (22:02.986)
Exactly. To us, the world is a campus. We are a university of the world and all of the different destinations that we have programs, that’s the classroom. So yeah, it’s, it’s metaphorical. And then we have lots, know, a of people are, you know, not as, not in as high of numbers, but people are looking to cross off their seventh continent, whether that’s an African safari or Antarctica programs or going to Australia, New Zealand with us. So those sort of more epic adventures are also really popular.

speaker-0 (22:13.784)
Okay.

speaker-0 (22:32.846)
I interviewed Adrienne Berg last week, at beginning of last week. She is… know her. Okay, so for those that don’t, she calls herself the ageless tourist. But one of the things that she was talking about were tourist volunteerism. Do you do that sort of thing?

speaker-1 (22:58.008)
We do, we call them service learning.

We have a small number of them. had more before COVID. There’s a lot of programs we kind of lost to COVID and we haven’t really brought back yet. So we’re in the process of adding some more of them back. The ones that we have right now, we have one on a Navajo reservation in the Southwest. That one’s popular and sells out every time. There’s a limited capacity on that one. So it sells out every single departure. And that’s also one where a lot of people will come back time and time again, because they love the experience and it’s different every time. And you’re teaching Navajo

children on a reservation. So because we have so many educators, that really appeals to a lot of them. So we have that one. We have one on the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor, where you get to do maintenance work on the ship. You get to stay overnight on the ship and be part of a special ceremony on the ship. So that one’s really cool, a really special. Just that’s a great example of when we talk about like exclusive access that you can get through Road Scholar, because that’s not something that you could just sign up and do on your own. really have to have the connection of doing something like that through Road Scholar.

And then we have one on Chincoteague Island where you’re doing kind of maintenance service work out in nature, doing some nature conservation stuff like that. And then we have two new ones that are, don’t think, they may not be on the website yet. If not, they’re going to be there soon. We have one in Trinidad and one in Guatemala that are going to be coming out.

speaker-0 (24:17.294)
She was talking about a number of things that they’re doing in Africa along the same lines, that sort of stuff. So that would probably just be your normal tours as opposed to your volunteer ones from the sounds of it.

speaker-1 (24:30.198)
Yeah, we don’t have anything service learning in Africa at the moment. We do have some where you visit, you know, some schools and you bring you don’t you bring donations or do things like that, but nothing that like the whole trip is focused on service learning.

speaker-0 (24:43.758)
So are you strictly American or can anybody, Canadians, Europeans, make use of your services?

speaker-1 (24:53.442)
Yes, anybody can enroll in our programs. Primarily, we serve people from the US, but from all across the US, from I think all 50 states we have participants in. And then we do have some Canadians and a few from the UK, but all of our programs are only offered in English. So you’re limited to that, but other than that, anybody can travel with us,

speaker-0 (25:14.808)
Cool. Cool. Okay. Why did you guys change your name? I’m just curious about it. I’ve heard a few explanations. I want to get it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

speaker-1 (25:28.118)
Yeah, so we changed our name in 2010 and it really had to do with that evolution. Like I said, once we had started serving boomers and we were no longer staying in hotels, were at that point we were staying in, sorry, we were no longer staying in college campuses.

At that point, the hostile piece of the name didn’t really fit anymore. And then also it got to the point where language had evolved and society had evolved and ageism, you know, had evolved. And the word elder was seen as a swear word to older adults, to the boomers. They didn’t see themselves as elderly, as senior citizens, as even elders, which you think of.

My first thought when you hear the word elder is like respect your elders, right? And so there’s different cultures and societies across the world that really take that much more seriously than we do in the US. And so boomers didn’t see themselves that way. There’s such a different generation from their parents and especially in older adulthood, like they didn’t see themselves as all quote unquote old.

they saw their retirement as such a different beast than what their parents had if they had, if their parents had a retirement at all. And so we really had to completely change not only the format of our programs, but the name of our organization and the way that we speak to and the way that we speak about our participants. It’s been really fascinating as a language person, as a communications English major to come to work at Rhodes Scholar and to see how not only we use that

that university language, but also how do you speak about older adults? Because like I said, people don’t like to be called a senior citizen. They don’t want the senior discount. Like they see that as a negative thing, which unfortunately it shouldn’t be negative. That’s the age of society that we live in, but we don’t want to offend anybody. But at the same time, we need to be clear about what we offer. And so, you know, I always refer to Rhodes Scholar as the not-for-profit world leader in educational travel for older adults.

speaker-1 (27:24.418)
So we say older adults usually. That’s also not super clear. Like what does older adult mean? So I always have to explain, well, we serve people over 50, but the average age of our participant is 72.

So that really is an average, because we have people in their 50s and we have people in their 90s that travel with us. And that’s a huge range of people. They are not one, that’s three different generations we’re talking about. And they all have different identities and different behaviors and different interests. And so it’s not just this one group of like old people. That’s not how it is. It’s three different unique generations that we’re serving at this point, which is really interesting. So when we are…

I don’t know if you know anything about SEO, you do, because you have your background in tech. So you’ll understand. I don’t know if all of your listeners will, but we have to use the words like senior tours in our SEO when we are building out our website so that when someone goes to Google and they search for tours for seniors, we come up in those results because that’s essentially what we do. But that’s not how we talk about ourselves in a brand. And that’s not how we refer to our participants. So it’s been just like a really interesting challenge as

I started at Road Scholar as a copywriter. So learning those words that we do use, the words that we don’t, where we use different types of words. I was also the social media manager for a very long time at Road Scholar. And so when we would use those words like senior citizen on Facebook, you’d immediately see in the comments, like somebody was upset about that. And so you had to kind of manage that as well. So it’s been, just from a language perspective, I think is like really fascinating.

speaker-0 (28:57.934)
Just as an aside, I’m 61. I remember going in. I’m a boomer. I’m the very last year of the boomers. I’m from 1964. I remember going into my pharmacy to get the prescriptions I had and they gave me a senior discount when I was 55. And I was going, what are you talking about? I still think of myself as in my 30s type thing.

speaker-1 (29:01.646)
You’re a boomer, right?

speaker-0 (29:26.846)
It’s the entire concept is was foreign to me even today. You said something interesting that I want to chase down and it’s not so much about the tourism.

Every what I really see a lot of is that there’s a bracket where everybody is broken down by, you know, every five, 10 years until you get to 65 and then it gets consolidated into a 65 plus. But you were talking about three different generations in there. How does that look? What’s the differences between that? I’m just I’m just really curious because you’re the first person I’ve talked to that is breaking down the

plus 65 plus into multiple different bands, so to speak.

speaker-1 (30:12.846)
They’re not a monolith for sure. That’s for certain. And we kind of have to because we’re not just a brand or an organization that serves people of all ages. And so we’re just treating people over 65 as one. We only serve people over 50. So we look at that more closely. So I mean, I talked about what happened when we started serving boomers and we completely shifted the format of our programming, the name of our organization, which is a big deal for like a 35 year old brand to change the name of their organization.

when we had such brand recognition across the U.S., it was a big deal to have to change our name. So that was the shift, the Baby Boomers. And then now we’re looking at preparing for Gen Xers. And we are serving some Gen Xers. It’s a very small percentage of our participants, but they are there. And so we’re starting to get ahead of preparing for that shift because the Baby Boomer shift was sort of easy on us. There was lots of boomers. So we had a lot of potential participants, but when we start to get…

closer to serving more Gen Xers, it’s gonna be a lot harder for us to spread that brand awareness and to make sure that we’re reaching the same enrollment numbers that we are now. So we need to be prepared for that. So we’re already starting to study them and look at them. We do a census survey where we look at our existing participants and their interests and behaviors and things like that. And I was studying it and I was looking at, there weren’t a lot of things that were standing out a ton. I think the biggest thing that I saw was that Gen X is,

disproportionately more interested in wellness as far as travel goes. So we do have some wellness programs, but I think that’s going to be something we’re going to be focusing on more as we start to plan for GenX. Most of our wellness programs that we have now, I don’t know the exact percentage, like ballpark, I’m going to say like 90 % of the participants who do them are women. So maybe that will change with GenX. We’ll have to see. But I think we’ll be offering more programs like that.

There’s also, know, GenXers use technology differently. I think we’re going to see more people enrolling on our website, more people engaging with us on social media. GenXers are really active on YouTube, which is a space that we don’t spend a lot of time right now and we’d like to spend more time. And also focusing on customization, both through like a web experience, like having when you go to our website, depending on your search behavior or on your web.

speaker-1 (32:36.408)
browsing behavior that our website would look different for you depending on what you’re interested in or even that the catalog that you get in the mail if you do get something in the mail, it’s customized to what you looked at on our website. So trying to do more of that customization as well as on our programs where GenXers are more interested in not only customization but having more independent time on the programs. So we do have some programs that are called independent city discoveries where there’s more

free time built into it to explore on your own. I think we’re going to see more of that moving forward. So those are some of the things that I can think of off the top of my head, but we’re definitely studying it. We’re preparing because it’s going to be a rude awakening once we really start to focus on the Gen Xers.

speaker-0 (33:21.262)
When you do have that, I’d really be interested in seeing what your results are because that is something that there’s a big gap in. With the growth, or growth, as society is getting older, there’s more and more people that bulges moving into the retirement and into the older. Are you seeing an increase in people making use of your services?

speaker-1 (33:42.062)
Well…

COVID kind of screwed with our numbers. It’s hard to look at any data right now, growth data and trend data, because we just got bounced, know, pushed back a couple of notches because of COVID. So we still haven’t even really recovered in reaching our enrollment numbers since before COVID. And I also looked at some data across US travel in general, and that also hasn’t recovered just across the entire industry. So it’s not just us, it’s just something that people just haven’t quite gotten back to the cadence that they’ve traveled, whether it’s because, you know,

comfort level with traveling, everything going on like politically in the world, the geopolitics I think are holding some people back from really jumping into it. So we are still not really quite back to where we were before. So it’s kind of hard to pinpoint that as far as the number of travelers.

speaker-0 (34:28.984)
Repeat business.

speaker-1 (34:30.894)
yes, definitely. think it’s like about 50-50 repeat and brand new every year. yeah, and word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing. It’s the hardest to control, but we just try to do that by delivering an incredible experience and hoping that people will tell their friends. And just anecdotally, when I talk to our participants and I ask them how…

They heard about us almost always it’s from a neighbor or a friend or maybe their parent traveled with elder hostile or their aunt or uncle or something like that. So it’s still a very, very important thing to us.

speaker-0 (35:04.972)
You said something about scholarships or grants or whatever for caregivers as well. So if a mother daughter go together where the mother is in their 90s, my father’s 94, that person would probably need more attention. Would that second person get that type of discount if their primary purpose or how would you show that the primary purpose of the second person is for caregiving?

speaker-1 (35:32.398)
Yeah, okay, so let me explain that. It’s not quite what you’re thinking. So the caregiver grant is to provide respite to the full-time family caregiver. they would arrange backup care for the person while they’re gone and they would go on the kids by themselves so that they could get respite and they could take care of themselves and they could reboot. A lot of times, that does require you to have the financial or another family to fill in for you you’re away. So that is kind of sometimes a barrier.

Sometimes see people take that trip after their loved one has passed away, after they’ve completed their caregiving journey. And it ends up in those cases being really a transition period of trying to figure out like, do I, I’ve been taking care of this person for so long. How do I refocus on myself? How do I grieve? How do I move on? And just what’s the next step?

know, chapter of my life look like. So that’s kind of what those experiences become for the person. But I will say, speaking of, you know, traveling with your parents, we’ve also seen a trend of older adults traveling with their adult children or traveling with their parents, like if it’s you we’re talking about. And I’m actually working on a study to try to like get some data and numbers around that. It’s kind of tricky to get to because…

We don’t ask on the registration forms how you’re related to the person you’re traveling with. So I’m trying to look at people that travel together who are at least 20 years apart. Obviously you can’t guarantee that all of those are parents and adult children. And then the other thing is there may be two people who paid separately and so they’re on two different orders, but they’re traveling together and we don’t know that. So it’s gonna be hard to get some actual data on it. I’m gonna put it on our census report this year too and see if I can.

pinpoint some data. And also I want to see if that’s a trend that’s grown. We feel anecdotally like it’s something that we’ve seen more and more. I think it is that point where there’s so many boomers who are caring for their parents and so they’re bringing them along or boomers who are bringing their Gen X or their millennial children with them too. So it’s definitely something that we’re seeing more and more. And I did do a survey of some of those people to see why they traveled with their

speaker-1 (37:45.568)
adult child or why they travel with their parent. And definitely one of those reasons is for that extra support of, you know, the older person, the adult, the parent wants that, you know, safety, security support of having someone with them, make sure that they don’t get lost or that they have somebody to carry their luggage or whatnot if they can’t physically do that. But there’s, there’s also just people who just enjoy each other’s company and that’s really awesome to see too.

speaker-0 (38:09.038)
So you’re talking with regards to the caregiver and a respite for the caregiver to recover after all that. What about for widows or widowers? I’ll give you an example. My father, when my mother passed away, he’s originally from Germany. All the family, his family is from Germany. We said, okay, go back to Germany. Go meet all the family, that sort of stuff. Kind of reground yourself. Remember that there’s others around you, not just my mom and not just my brother.

But there’s a bit of a counseling aspect to that as well. Do you have anything along those lines or have you thought with regards to the easing a widow or widower back into life along those lines?

speaker-1 (38:54.456)
We don’t have anything specifically like targeted or offered just for widows, but we have a lot of widows that travel with us. And that’s as a PR person who like I consider myself a storyteller and my job is to tell a Rhodes Scholar story, but also our participant stories. And those are some of the most heartwarming stories that you come across as the people who say, you know, I am widowed and I never knew that I traveled with my partner. I’m scared to travel alone or I don’t know if I’m ready.

But then they find Road Scholar and Road Scholar offers them that opportunity to be with the group so they’re not traveling of their own age and so they’re not totally on their own so you arrive solo but you’re not you’re not alone and so there’s the safety aspect, social aspect, there’s a lot of benefits to widows to traveling with us and in fact like I know of one story of some participant that told me that

speaker-0 (39:26.1)
on age two.

speaker-1 (39:44.17)
I think it was one of the wellness programs in the Southwestern California maybe. And they met multiple other, like something like half of the group was widows or something like that. And they all bonded so closely and it was really therapeutic for them. I know of another participant, he had traveled on 50 programs with us. He went on his 50th program for his 91st birthday, I think it was, and his name’s Bob. And I interviewed him and he was enrolled in his very first elder hospital program years before.

with his wife and she passed away suddenly and he was gonna cancel the trip, but he decided something told him like, just go, you need this. And he hadn’t really been a big traveler before that. And so Road Scholar Elder Hospital at the time just really opened.

like all of these doors for him to be able to discover the world. He ended up taking all of his grandkids, both domestically and internationally, which he’s like, it’s hard to even believe now that I took like my teenage grandkids internationally, like as a grandfather, but he did it and he, you know, was made, Road Scholar made it possible. So we definitely hear a lot of stories of widows traveling with us. I’ve thought about trying to offer dates just for widows, but it’s just tricky because…

You don’t want it to be like a negative, have like a negative vibe on it. And so we just try to be welcoming to everybody and all solo travelers. And a lot of those things just happen organically. People feel welcomed or they meet other widows on the trips.

speaker-0 (41:10.414)
Yeah, I wasn’t thinking in terms of widows with widows type situation. I was just thinking of support mechanisms. But the fact that you’re with other people of the same age, chances are more likely they’ve gone through something like that themselves. So as you said, they’re there.

speaker-1 (41:26.636)
Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of brings me to the social aspect of the trips, which we haven’t really talked about is that, and it’s so important about the experience. Again, with the social isolation and loneliness epidemic, know, having social connections is so important as we age and Road Scholar has, we’ve always really kind of seen ourselves as an antidote to that because

When you are such a specific organization, like all of our trips are all about learning and education. And so that type of experience attracts a certain type of person. And so the people that come on our trips all have something in common right away. They’re interested in travel, they’re interested in learning. They might be all interested in pickleball if it’s a really specific trip like that. And so that just creates an environment where people bond very quickly.

And we hear all the time of people making lifelong friends, traveling together for years to come, especially the solo travelers. You can even as a solo traveler, enroll and opt to share a roommate, be matched with a roommate. So you can save on the extra single supplement. And a lot of times people will be matched with a roommate. They become lifelong friends and travel companions for the rest of their lives. So not only do you get the social…

You get to stretch that social muscle while you’re on the trip, but lot of these relationships carry over and become a lifeline for people once they get home.

speaker-0 (42:51.118)
Well, anyway, I know I’m just thinking about all the commonalities of how people get hooked into this and what they come away with. One of the things that I hear across every conversation I have is purpose, that by having a purpose, you become that much more healthy and you last longer, you live longer. And

speaker-1 (42:53.864)
aren’t we?

speaker-0 (43:17.262)
this travel aspect. When you mentioned the 91 year old that had gone through 50 of your tours, that’s another purpose. It’s he wanted to travel and learn and be amongst different situations. I think that’s a fabulous thing.

speaker-1 (43:33.122)
Yeah, and we even hear it’s not even just the experience, but having something to look forward to. like, even if you only go on one trip a year with us, once you book that you get…

you get fulfilled by getting the catalog in the mail and flipping through it and circling things and getting excited and then picking the trip and enrolling in it and researching your flights and doing all of that. And then once you book it, you have that to look forward to. You might be more motivated if you’re going on a hiking trip to like get out there and practice, even if it’s like a lower activity level and you’re just like walking around Quebec City. Quebec City is super hilly, so you better be ready for that. a lot it motivates a lot of people to physically prepare and it just gives people something to

forward to you. So traveling with us once a year can change your entire year.

speaker-0 (44:17.77)
Learn the language wherever you’re going, that sort of thing. So yeah. Well, Kelsey, last question I always ask everybody. If you were to give people one piece of advice, what would you give?

speaker-1 (44:20.674)
Yeah, exactly.

speaker-0 (44:35.118)
I got her thinking.

speaker-1 (44:36.96)
I know that’s I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is travel advice because that’s what I’m

speaker-0 (44:42.894)
And then, perfect.

speaker-1 (44:45.236)
Okay, so I would say, okay, and then I have another one. I’m gonna give two if that’s okay. The first thing is just kind of more like general travel advice is pack as light as possible. I think this is, it’s a good piece of advice for anybody, but especially older adults. I think that the lighter that you can pack, the less encumbered you can be by suitcases and the safer you can be when you’re traveling. You don’t have to be worried about carrying six different suitcases. Try to keep things in as few, you know,

suitcases or bags as possible so that when you’re at a busy train station or you’re in an airport and you’re trying to find, you know, your train or whatever it is that you can carry everything and that you have less things to worry about so that you can be more aware of your surroundings and that you can be safer. So that’s a great advice for older adults, solo travelers, women, for everybody really, but that’s something that I always recommend for travel advice. And then I think also just for, I mean,

My advice is to go with Road Scholar because even if you’re someone who, like I never, I’ve been a lover of travel since I studied abroad in Ireland in college and it just opened the world to me. And I never thought that I would be interested in group travel. A lot of people are like, that’s not for me. I don’t want to have a schedule. I don’t want to maybe be with other people and feel like I need to be on and socialize the whole time. But unless you’ve tried it,

You just, can’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I really think we hear so many incredible things from our participants that they’re impacted by our programs on such a deeper level. And so I just, you know, just try it. Just look at our website, find the right trip for you. We have something for everybody and give it a shot. If you’re a solo traveler, if you’re a widow, someone who’s a little bit nervous to go by yourself, what I recommend for those people is go to our Women of Road Scholar Facebook group.

We have so many widows and solo travelers who are asking questions in that group about, you know, looking for encouragement and you’ll get a hundred comments in 15 minutes of people just encouraging you and empowering you to go ahead and give it a shot. So that’s, you know, biased advice, but I think everybody would love Rhodes. I love it. I’ve been on eight programs myself and two with my mom, two with my husband on our honeymoon even. And there it’s, it’s changed my life. So I know it can change everybody’s.

speaker-0 (47:06.518)
Let me throw one little comment in with regards to all that. Yeah. One of the things I found with most products is they’re designed by 20 and 30 year olds and they don’t think about the older ones. And they have different needs, different desires. Road Scholar is all about for this older traveler. So as a result, the thought process around what works for this group is much

deeper and going to be much more satisfying. So from a Rhodes Scholar point of view, think that’s a plus that I don’t see anywhere else.

speaker-1 (47:45.538)
Yeah, you got it. mean, that’s all that we do. And so that is, we put so much thought into it. And yes, there are some 20 and 30 year olds that are designing our programs, but we’ve all been very well trained and we’ve all had experiences with older people.

speaker-0 (47:57.804)
Exactly, you’re immersed into it.

speaker-1 (47:59.854)
We are thinking about things in a different way and it takes a while. It’s a learning curve when you come to work here for sure. But, you know, there’s lots of ways, you know, the fact that we have our Road Scholar Assurance Plan and we offer that on all of our trips because we want to make sure that you’re covered with health insurance no matter where you go. That’s something that, you know, we’ve done because we’re serving older adults and you never know what can happen with anybody. particularly with older adults, you want to make sure that you’re covered with like health things, health benefits like that. We have listening devices on 80 % of our programs.

where you have like a little earbud in your ear and the know the person who’s taking you the instructor that’s taking you around like old Prague is speaking into a little microphone so not only does that ensure that everybody in the group can hear but that also means that you can walk through old Prague and you’re not this like this tour group where you have a guide who’s like speaking really loud to everyone and you can’t really hear them it’s it’s less

less of an eyesore to the local area that you’re walking around. know, one person can be off kind of like window shopping a little bit or looking down an alley and you can still hear everybody and you can still stay connected. So that’s another example of how we serve older adults. There’s lots of different ways and lots of different things that we put into thinking about that. The variety of mobility levels that we offer, as I said, you can go on our website and search filter by mobility level, but…

ability level so you can find the right program that’s right for you. And we have to offer that range because, you know, it’s a reality that your mobility is going to change and evolve as you get older. But that also doesn’t mean that everything has to be slow paced because there’s a lot of older adults who are very in-cheap and can, you know, do a lot. So we have to have a range. So there’s lots of different ways, but those are just some examples of how we specifically serve older adults.

speaker-0 (49:47.47)
Perfect. Nice way to end. Kelsey, thank you very much. For everybody that’s watching, I will put the link to the Rhodes Scholar website in the description so that you can gain access to there. Don’t forget to click like and subscribe. That way you get more of this type of content. Anyway, Kelsey, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (49:49.388)
Yes, perfect! a pleasure!

speaker-1 (50:13.816)
Perfect, thank you.