DATAPOINT: 20%
What it is: The percent of the world population that will be over age 55 by 2025.
A worldwide increase in the older population demographic is well under way, but most businesses in the travel industry are ignoring the trend. The global increase in the older population demographic is one of five major demographic and consumer shifts examined by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for The World Economic Forum in cooperation with more than 50 partner companies from the transportation, IT, and telecommunications industries.
The BCG report on it’s findings, released this week and titled “Connected World: Transforming Travel, Transportation and Supply Chains,” focuses on presenting a set of potential scenarios and solutions around how travel and transportation is likely to evolve by 2025. The research covers the impact of a wide variety of potential socio-political, economic and environmental developments from migration patterns to energy demand, terrorism, social networks, virtual travel, the emergence of mega cities, and more.
There are, of course, myriad unknowns and possibilities but “demographic shifts are some of the most predictable mega trends,” BCG’s Alison Sanders told Travel Weekly PLUS. “Barring some kind of serious plague or new world war or something of that order, you can pretty much predict by country almost down to the zip code level how the population’s going to age.”
The aging population is “fascinating,” Sanders said, “both for it’s pace and because it’s unprecedented. A baby girl born in the U.S. in 1900 had a life expectancy around 47 years. A baby girl born today has a life expectancy in the U.S. of close to 80 years. There’s been almost a doubling.”
The most growth is happening at the extreme end of the age scale. “The fastest growing demographic on the planet for the last 30 years has been centenarians, or people over 100,” Sanders said. “We don’t necessarily see those people as core travelers in your markets, but if you look at who really has the time to travel, it is very much this senior population, particularly people who have retired.”
Japan, she said, is “the first country in the world where half the population is already over 40 years old, but by about 2050 almost every G7 or large major country is going to be similarly aged as Japan is today. So it’s funny that very few countries are planning around this.”
Countries aren’t the only enterprises that seem to be ignoring the numbers. Despite the size and global reach of the aging population, it turns out that not a whole lot of companies in the travel industry are taking the trend into consideration as part of a longer-term business plan.
“Given that we’re all aging ourselves and we all see this trend happening, what’s most interesting to us is that not that many travel companies have explicitly shifted their strategy around,” Sanders said.
As part of its research, BCG examined several companies that are adapting to the trend. “Boeing has been working for quite a while on setting up age-friendly airplanes, Sanders said. “Ford has done some interesting pioneering work to develop cars that are much more senior friendly. They make their engineers wear this not-very-comfortable suit. It’s called a third-age suit, and it simulates reduced agility. It adds about 30 pounds to your middle. It hunches your back. And it includes goggles that are slightly harder to see out of. The net effect of bringing that kind of awareness to R&D teams is that the company is developing a lot more senior-friendly vehicles.”
Sanders said the trend has far-reaching implications for every business in the travel industry. “This particular trend is highly predictable, and it will cause a significant shift over the next 10 years,” she said. “Yet only a small portion of companies in the travel business have actually begun to retrofit their vehicles and the travel experience for this population, or to market specific services this population is looking for.”