Decline in family values.

As a kid we used my parents vacation time to visit family.

As seen by numerous posts people are angry when they can't travel on their luxury vacation due to Mom or Grandma.

People used to put family first.

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s related to social media. Guaranteed, part of the attraction to taking all these bougie trips is posting the photos to Facebook and Instagram after.

This. It is the instagramming of America. I had an employee who went on vacation to Houston. I asked her what she enjoyed doing there. They did not do anything. They rented a house with a pool and took a lot of pictures to post.

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of it is just that researching travel is so much easier than it used to be. Back in the day you needed someone to send you everything from paper maps to hotel recommendations to restaurant recommendations to activities. Planning a trip involved you or a travel agent writing letters to request information from multiple tourism agencies. It was a huge hassle.

Now everything is on the Internet. It's simple to look up transit information, hotel and restaurant reviews, buy tickets for activities, etc. Everything has been reviewed and you can even watch video reviews with tons of information. It's much lower risk and much, much easier. The world feels smaller.

I remember traveling Eastern Europe just before the Internet and I relied heavily on a travel book like Lonely Planet or Let's Go. But those often had information that was 2-4 years out of date because of publishing timelines. So I'd get off the train in a new place and walk to the tourism office to get the scoop. In some places you'd get off a bus and ask at the local bar about people who would put up backpackers. I was super flexible as a backpacker, but I can't imagine doing that with a family. You'd have to write ahead for info. Now, you can plan everything with just a few clicks. It's not at all the same.

I miss the old way sometimes. My first two international trips were before online travel planning was really a thing (early 00s so the internet existed, but you weren't booking flights and researching your whole trip online) and I actually liked it. I liked using those books as a guide but then having to make decisions on the fly. One of them was a classic college kid backpacking in Europe adventure, and I remember getting into a city on a train with a friend and then heading off to find a hostel. Can you imagine? No reservations. If our first choice based on friend recommendations and travel guide books was full, we'd have to go to the next one. In the meantime, you'd be interacting with a bunch of people who either didn't speak English or pretended not to, navigating public transportation and street signs in a foreign language, going to a grocery store to grab bread and cheese and an apple for a quick lunch in a park somewhere. It felt like real adventure even though it was also pretty safe.

I sometimes wonder if my kid will get to have experiences like that as a young adult. I hope so. I don't want her thinking everything has to be planned down to the last minute and that there's no room for just wandering and seeing what happens. I have these very specific memories of stuff like having to change money in a bank in Prague where no one spoke any English and we spoke no Czech, and having a friend who knew some Polish helping us navigate it. Or having an extremely kind hostel "mom" in Florence take pity on us when we got in really late and there were no rooms, and arrange for us to stay in her friend's vacant apartment next door instead, and having to take the leap to trust her. Those are the sorts of travel experiences every young person should have some version of.

I think people are also trying to make up for the COVID years too to some extent. That might be fading off now

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even with all the inflation in housing/college/healthcare costs, the UMC is wealthier today than the UMC in the 80s-90s.

Really? I usually hear the opposite. Nowadays all I hear are people complaining about how much easier Boomers had it wrt housing, healthcare, education fees, etc.

Those are usually middle class people like me; most of the UMC is wealthier now than they were then.

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the more disposable income. Also, travel is much easier than it was 20/ 30 years ago. There are many more resources available for people who want to travel. You can look up rates and book with airlines directly instead of relying and booking with a travel agent. Discount airlines exist. AirBnb and VRBO exist in a space where there used to be hostels and hotels.

I also think COVID kept people home, and now they are doubling down on travel in a way no one has seen before. DH is m overseas, and after not having the ability to easily see family and home for a long time, will find ways for us to travel there.

I also don’t think the concept and role of social media isn’t a factor. So many people view themselves as potential influencers, and what are you if you’re not having exotic travel pics to share?

And my last thought it that people are always looking for ways to make their children “better” than their friends (cough cough seen as competition). They’re no longer getting ahead on tutoring and travel sports, so there is something left in international travel to make them (or the family) seem more worldly. I agree that travel makes s Peel more worldly, but what I often see is a ski resort in Colorado being set apart for two in France and Switzerland, even though the kids will never do anything other than fly in and ski.

Agree that your last point is definitely a thing among UMC people, at least in the DMV. There's a strong push for your kid to be worldly. Language immersion is part of this too, and tangential to people who make a big deal about their foreign nanny or housekeeper and how their kids are learning about another culture through her. I also know people who are very weirdly boastful about their friends who are not American. That last one is so specific to DC, I think, where there are many people from other countries living and working here, but it's still kind of funny to hear sometimes, when I hear people going on and on about their friends who are this or that nationality, and then you meet them and they are just regular UMC professionals in DC.

But yes, the thing about making their kids worldly via travel is funny when people then spend a lot of money to make sure travel is easy and smooth and perfectly entertaining and comfortable. I guess there is a kind of worldliness that comes from being able to say you went to some Michelin starred restaurant in Barcelona at the age of 5 or went skiing in the Swiss Alps at 8. But to me, worldliness from travel comes from discomfort and having to adjust -- the challenge of navigating another country and maybe a language you don't speak or barely speak, dealing with jet lag and imperfect accommodations, and the unexpected surprises of travel. To me that's character building and memorable in a way that really is good for kids (and adults). But most people don't want that because it's harder.

I think a lot of it is just that researching travel is so much easier than it used to be. Back in the day you needed someone to send you everything from paper maps to hotel recommendations to restaurant recommendations to activities. Planning a trip involved you or a travel agent writing letters to request information from multiple tourism agencies. It was a huge hassle.

Now everything is on the Internet. It's simple to look up transit information, hotel and restaurant reviews, buy tickets for activities, etc. Everything has been reviewed and you can even watch video reviews with tons of information. It's much lower risk and much, much easier. The world feels smaller.

I remember traveling Eastern Europe just before the Internet and I relied heavily on a travel book like Lonely Planet or Let's Go. But those often had information that was 2-4 years out of date because of publishing timelines. So I'd get off the train in a new place and walk to the tourism office to get the scoop. In some places you'd get off a bus and ask at the local bar about people who would put up backpackers. I was super flexible as a backpacker, but I can't imagine doing that with a family. You'd have to write ahead for info. Now, you can plan everything with just a few clicks. It's not at all the same.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have wondered this too. I also grew up in an affluent bubble. Maybe you went on a school trip to Italy in high school or a service trip to Central America, and maybe skiing to Vail once in a while, but no one went on these trips 3-4x a year.

We are comfortable but I do wonder how people afford this?

Op here. Yes exactly what I’m talking about!

The rich apple I knew were much more likely to own a second home at the beach then take international vacations. Maybe one or two bucket list type trips right after retirement. But the people I know take 4-5 bucket list type trips a year! How do they afford that??

Where do they get the time? I never got 6-8 weeks of vacation. I maxed at 4 and always used 2 visiting family.

Nowadays people can work while on trips. Back in the day I think the wife and kids went to the vacation house with the dad joining on the wknd. Generally speaking with stereotypes of course.

But also interesting point raised earlier about two high-power career couples these days, which was less the case back then with a stay at home mom.

People work remotely while on international vacations? Do many employers allow that?

Mine does.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rich are richer today.

Yup- more disposable income among the top 10%, and travel (especially the flying part) is cheaper (accounting for inflation) and easier (more flights to more destinations) than it was 30-35 years ago

Exactly this and once it's a "norm" it doesn't sound or feel crazy. We look at it as "where should we go for spring break" vs the default being to stay home. I say this as someone whose destinations are less exotic than the OP but we usually go somewhere.

Also with early DINK/yuppie years and incomes, we got used to travel as a norm, and want to continue with kids. My parents did not have the $ or practice of doing that and they had kids younger.

It's like eating out - we were comfortably UMC but rarely ate in a restaurant and almost never got takeout, let alone delivery. Now it's part of our MO.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have wondered this too. I also grew up in an affluent bubble. Maybe you went on a school trip to Italy in high school or a service trip to Central America, and maybe skiing to Vail once in a while, but no one went on these trips 3-4x a year.

We are comfortable but I do wonder how people afford this?

Op here. Yes exactly what I’m talking about!

The rich apple I knew were much more likely to own a second home at the beach then take international vacations. Maybe one or two bucket list type trips right after retirement. But the people I know take 4-5 bucket list type trips a year! How do they afford that??

Where do they get the time? I never got 6-8 weeks of vacation. I maxed at 4 and always used 2 visiting family.

Nowadays people can work while on trips. Back in the day I think the wife and kids went to the vacation house with the dad joining on the wknd. Generally speaking with stereotypes of course.

But also interesting point raised earlier about two high-power career couples these days, which was less the case back then with a stay at home mom.

People work remotely while on international vacations? Do many employers allow that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have wondered this too. I also grew up in an affluent bubble. Maybe you went on a school trip to Italy in high school or a service trip to Central America, and maybe skiing to Vail once in a while, but no one went on these trips 3-4x a year.

We are comfortable but I do wonder how people afford this?

Op here. Yes exactly what I’m talking about!

The rich apple I knew were much more likely to own a second home at the beach then take international vacations. Maybe one or two bucket list type trips right after retirement. But the people I know take 4-5 bucket list type trips a year! How do they afford that??

Where do they get the time? I never got 6-8 weeks of vacation. I maxed at 4 and always used 2 visiting family.

Nowadays people can work while on trips. Back in the day I think the wife and kids went to the vacation house with the dad joining on the wknd. Generally speaking with stereotypes of course.

But also interesting point raised earlier about two high-power career couples these days, which was less the case back then with a stay at home mom.

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s related to social media. Guaranteed, part of the attraction to taking all these bougie trips is posting the photos to Facebook and Instagram after.

+1

People with disposable incomes have always traveled. And some people always have wanderlust and enjoy it. But social media has ramped up the trend of "competitive travel," where people travel with very high frequency and there is a drive to always be going someplace different or far flung, someplace others have not been.

I have always enjoyed travel and have had the good fortune to do some great trips, but in recent years I've found I don't enjoy talking about travel with a lot of other people I know in the DMV, and it's that feeling of competition. Like in the last few years I've experienced people being annoyed to discover we traveled to the same place as they did (why would this annoy you? isn't it fun to compare notes). Some people aren't even subtle, they'll literally say "Oh I thought we'd discovered something new, guess not" or similar. Like... who cares. It used to be that everyone went to the same places on vacation. It was fine.

I've also experience people acting superior because I have not been somewhere they think you HAVE to go. Like Iceland became a really popular destination a while back because of all the cheap flights, but we never went because the timing was never right and we were taking other trips we'd been planning for longer. But I know people who will scoff at this -- "you haven't been to Iceland yet? wow." Like it's strange for an American to not have visited Iceland in 2024. That's such a weird attitude! Especially when you realize that the people who do this often haven't been to, like, Montana or New Orleans, easy domestic trips that offer very special, specific experiences.

Anyway, I still love travel, but I don't talk about it as much as I used to. It's just not fun when it's a contest. I have no desire to win or lose "vacationing."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have wondered this too. I also grew up in an affluent bubble. Maybe you went on a school trip to Italy in high school or a service trip to Central America, and maybe skiing to Vail once in a while, but no one went on these trips 3-4x a year.

We are comfortable but I do wonder how people afford this?

Op here. Yes exactly what I’m talking about!

The rich apple I knew were much more likely to own a second home at the beach then take international vacations. Maybe one or two bucket list type trips right after retirement. But the people I know take 4-5 bucket list type trips a year! How do they afford that??

Where do they get the time? I never got 6-8 weeks of vacation. I maxed at 4 and always used 2 visiting family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s related to social media. Guaranteed, part of the attraction to taking all these bougie trips is posting the photos to Facebook and Instagram after.

I am one of these people who travel internationally three times a year and I have never posted a travel picture online. I am a very private person who happens to love travel. It’s really sad that some people can’t seem to under that.

Thanks for sharing, I guess?

Or even if people don’t do it for the Gram solely but then post on social media - we’re all more aware of it. For example I’m friends with thousands of people who I know in real life on Facebook (even though I barely use Facebook now but I used to be into it). In the 80s my parents had no idea what their friends from high school with were doing unless they were still really in touch with them whereas I can just see if I log onto Facebook what everyone I ever met in my whole life is up to.