Following Australian travel company Flight Centre's acquisition last week of the U.K.-based social networking site Gapyear.com, Senior Editor Michelle Baran spoke with Gapyear's founder and CEO, Tom Griffiths, about the concept of taking an extended vacation.
Q: What does the term "gap year" evoke?
A: The gap year is more this term of traveling in between life stages rather than being determined by a length of time. It's not a holiday. It's a slightly different kind of travel: before or after going to university, before getting a job, or within or around having children. A lot of couples now are traveling pre-wedding and on and around retirement. There are a phenomenal amount of baby boomers now reaching retirement age looking for independent travel rather than dependent travel.
Q: What is fueling the growth in popularity of the gap year?
A: The entire sector's been fueled by the downturn as a lot of people have been made redundant. [If you] take your redundancy check, sell your car and rent [out] your apartment, that's enough to take a year off and travel around Southeast Asia. It's cheaper to live in Thailand than it is to live in New York. You can say, "I'm not unemployed, I'm on my gap year."
Q: How does Gapyear.com facilitate that experience?
A: [In 1998], we were one of the first social media sites in the travel space. Well, it's now known as social media; in those days there was no term for it. We just had a community of people who traveled. ... The model is very simple: You put like-minded people in the same place. It's a scary thing, especially if you're young, to drop everything and head out around the world. You get ... the gap year gurus to come out and give you the advice, the insider information and tell you [that] you can do it.
Q: Where does Flight Centre fit in?
A: [People] can come online, meet. When they want to buy their travel, we have a travel planning system that takes them into a local store. This is where Flight Centre seems like the obvious partner. They have a network of stores and 12,000 staff. We're building a travel proposition from the basis of a social network.
Q: Do you think the gap year concept could ever successfully be imported stateside?
A: In America it's a term that's used much more than people realize, [though] clearly, not to the extent that it's used in the U.K.
In year two we're looking to come to America to grow the gap year market. We'll be going to schools and universities, launching the Gap Year magazine, creating a social media strategy.
Over the next five years, the plan is really to grow the gap year market, which is really in slow growth in America, and make the term as big and common as it is all over the world.
Q: How will you do that?
A: We'll have a platform for Americans to use at the end of 2011. We'll be working with Liberty [Travel], with people taking their gap year, and we're just going to get all this content and start developing it. Build it up gradually. It's a model we've done in the U.K. ... and we've had proven success.
Q: What will the site look like?
A: We've broken down the market into three sectors: under 26, 27 to 50 years old and the 50-plus market. They all buy different products. When you go to the new site, you'll be identified by your country. Once we've identified that you're an American in [a certain] age segment, we've identified the product that is relevant to you.