Resonance Consulting out of Vancouver has a new report out: 2018 Future of Millennial Travel. You can download a free copy here. Resonance does great work and really gets content marketing.
The first chapter immediately caught my attention, perhaps because it’s called, Cities are the Destinations. It talks about how big cities as a travel destination are a highly underreported tourism metric. Historically it’s been all about beach vacations and escaping.
According to their survey, Millennials (aged 20 to 36 years old as of March 16, 2017) are almost as likely to travel to a major city (38%) as they are to travel to a beach resort (40%) in the next 24 months. (I wonder where the mountains fit in.)
Also interesting is that this number increases when household earnings increase beyond $100,000. This subset of respondents is most likely to visit a major city on their next vacation (40%). It’s all about new experiences.
I’m not an expert on travel and tourism, but Resonance is calling this a sea change and a likely indicator that, in the near future, big cities will become the dominant travel destination. Is your city ready?
Photo by Nathan Ziemanski on Unsplash
Arup, the global consulting firm, has an interesting publication out called Cities Alive: Towards a walking world. The report highlights 50 benefits of walking and then 40 actions that city leaders can take today to transform their cities. The entire study was informed by examining 80 international case studies.
As I was going through the report, the following diagram caught my attention. It compares journeys on foot vs. journeys by car for a collection of global cities.
The turquoise circles represent % of journeys by walking. On the left is Los Angeles at 4%. And on the right is Istanbul at 48%.
The red circles represent % of journeys by car. On the left is Miami at 79% (with Los Angeles right beside it). And on the right is Kolkata at 2%.
The map in the middle of the circles represents pedestrians killed in traffic crashes per 100,000 people.
I’m not sure where the data was drawn from, but it’s not all that surprising to see a few North American cities clustered towards the left (less walking; more driving). Still, I wonder how “journey” is defined.
To view the full report, click here. Arup also produces a lot of other great content that you can download for free, here.