A New Industry Report published by the World Youth, Student and Educational (WYSE) Travel Confederation and UNWTO says, (it seems somewhat counter intuitive but) “today’s young travellers stay longer and spend overall more than mainstream tourists. Since 2002, the average spend per trip has increased by 40%.”  

With a “make a difference” headset, “70% of young people travel with a purpose – to learn a language, volunteer, work or study abroad etc.” according to the UNWTO report.

Today’s eMarketer article titled, “Gen Y Comes into Focus” points out that the US Gen Y universe is about 70 million strong (depending on your definition of Gen Y), surfed the Internet 22 times a month on average and averages 28 days of Xbox, Playstation or  Wii a month.  One half of those under 24 made a purchase online in a one year period ending March ‘08.  In 2007, 13 to 21 year olds spent over $120 billion.  And in 9 years Gen Y income will be almost 3.5 trillion dollars.

So, Millennials find travel to be more important than their elders and spending has increased 40% but they are media elusive, multi-taskers.  As I wrote the other day , they don’t want marketing messages via Text, RSS or IM and like generations before them, make purchases based on good old direct mail and email (this too, seems counter intuitive).